


what the ground grows

by coldmackerel



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, but hey we can still have a good time here right, clarke gets shot in the head, hey folks read the label on the can, i would categorize this as dark humor, i'll be straight up, its a healing story i guess, its rated for a really graphic description of traumatic head injury, ive been fun like twice in my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 11:22:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10463760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldmackerel/pseuds/coldmackerel
Summary: There is nothing a little bedrest and irony can't cure.Lexa is sure the only thing that heals Clarke's mind and keeps her heart thumping against her ribs is an ill-advised amount of the first and a frustrating amount of the second. But Clarke has never been anything less than ill-advised and frustrating. If anybody will survive a hole in their brain, Lexa is sure it will be Clarke.(At Heda's expense, of course.)[complete]





	1. marley's ghost

**Author's Note:**

> pretty sure nobody even prowls this fandom anymore, but i dug this out of the depths of my computer, ran a spellcheck (yeah right lmao) and packaged it for consumption. why let it rot in my hard drive when i can let it rot in yours.
> 
> so nobody yells at me and this doesn't hit you upside your head from left field:
> 
> clarke gets shot in the head. this story is largely the aftermath.
> 
> its in the tags, but this story deals with traumatic brain injury. the description of the attack is in chapter 4 and its accurate to my own knowledge and experience of traumatic violence so HEY, dont get too fucked up on that.
> 
> on that cheerful note, this ended up still as kind of a comedy?? whatever, if yall know me yall know me. if you don't, there is nothing i can do to prepare you.

 

Clarke remembers two things when it’s all said and done and Lexa can’t decide which one she would rather dedicate hammering industrial nails through her own eyelids to.

Clarke remembers two things:

Clarke remembers a skulking, sullen boy named John Murphy who treats her attachment and reliance on his company like a chore.

And Clarke remembers, of all things, some ancient Skaikru film, salvaged from the old world, about an unpleasant man who is kidnapped by ghosts which brainwash him into being happy about his horrible life and celebrating an annual reverse burglary holiday by some chaotic pagan god who appears to mortals as a fat man who loves cookies and hanging socks on mantels and murdering trees for decoration. Or something like that. Lexa has listened raptly to an enthusiastic summary of the plot at least once a day for weeks and she is still not entirely sure what children are meant to learn from it except that if you’re grumpy you’re more prone to supernatural hauntings.

Which of these two things is worse remains to be determined.

On the one hand, Murphy had proven himself a rather underwhelming ally in the brief time he had been acquainted to her. But on the other hand, Clarke remembers a film about… _that_ more than she remembers Lexa. Or her own mother. Or her friends, or the things they’ve accomplished, or healing, or the names of the seasons, or how to read, or the names and faces of people she has lost, or the number of lives her own hands have taken, or the color trees turn in that one season she can’t remember anymore, or the tracks certain animals leave in soft earth, or that melody she used to hum under her breath when she was particularly distracted and comfortable.

No, those things are gone. So Lexa doesn’t find she’s being uncharitable when she regards the two things Clarke _has_ been allowed to retain with a certain degree of despondency.

Murphy. And a film about a home intruder who favors the color red.

Clarke remembers only two things with any kind of consistency and neither of those things is Lexa.

It’s selfish. She’s not sure of many things, but of that she’s sure. Wanting one of those few things Clarke remembers to be _her_ is selfish considering the hierarchy of things Clarke _should_ remember. But – well, knowing something and being able to do anything about it are two entirely different battles.

“Is that food?”

Lexa startles, stuck stiff with locked knees in the entrance to Clarke’s room with her knuckles white where they clutch at a tray of rapidly cooling food. Every time she enters Clarke’s room it’s another trial – a fresh noose around her throat and the sound of gunfire and panic and bodies dropping like ragdolls, heads lulling at awkward angles and blood pooling like rainfall in thick puddles in the mud. Her teeth grind together and she blinks once, twice, three times to dispel the memory she’s lived every day for a full lunar cycle back into the spot she’s cleared out for it in her brain. She’s offered it lodging. She does not expect it to leave where it has taken up residency, but she does ask that it not be an entirely rude houseguest.

A _houseguest_.

She wonders vaguely if her predecessors ever referred to their own debilitating trauma as ‘houseguests’. The flame remains traitorously quiet at her musings, though, so she has to believe they would prefer she stop asking them unseemly questions. Heda does not have houseguests and Heda is not _traumatized_.

Apparently.

“Did I say something weird?” Clarke smiles but it’s guilty and her eyes drift down to the ends of her hair while she tugs at it. Well, what’s left of it after her mother’s frantic sheering and plugging and stitching. It’s mostly gone on one side, but her scalp is hidden still by bandages and soft wrappings. She’s still beautiful. She always will be.

Lexa shakes her head (because Heda is not traumatized, ect.) and forces her feet towards the bed at the back of the room. “No,” she says a little too eagerly before forcing her mouth to slow down. “No. I was lost in my own thoughts.”

“Any idea where I could get some of those?” Clarke was still smiling, if a little less guiltily, and reached out for the tray Lexa was offering her.

Lexa sighs. “What, thoughts?”

Clarke hums in the affirmative and pokes around the tray of food curiously like she’s seeing it all for the first time. Well, Lexa supposes she is. Even insignificant things like Clarke’s unfamiliarity with rice and vegetables shave years off Lexa’s already short life expectancy. Heda may die by the blade, but she is sure they all would have dropped dead before too long, regardless, with the weight of what they know and do. Several of them did, actually.

Mostly she has murder to look forward too, though. Glorified or not remains to be seen. She’s too tired to care. And secretly, she’s fairly certain she’s not going to care much with a blade stuck in her gut whether it looked legendary to her vanguard or more like a stuck pig in a longcoat. She’ll leave it up to them and the generously creative bards.

Surely, dead is dead.

“You’re welcome to mine,” Lexa mutters and she intends it to be a dry end to a painful conversation, but Clarke laughs.

The sound is…it hurts a little. But in a good way and it pulls a small smile into the corner of her mouth. A few moments pass with Lexa standing awkwardly at Clarke’s bedside while Clarke explores, rediscovers, and reacquaints herself with the magic of common garden vegetables. She doesn’t seem too keen on carrots, but the squash and beans appear a worthwhile adventure for her. Lexa’s sure Clarke can’t wait to discover them all over again in a few hours.

Finally, Clarke looks up, startling briefly like she forgot Lexa was there. Lexa can’t help but wonder if it is the hole in her skull or Lexa’s general awkwardness that is responsible. Clarke settles quickly, though, and presses on from where they left off.

“Well?”

Lexa shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sorry?”

Clarke laughs and tries to set her tray on the bedside table before Lexa moves to help her. “You said I could have some of yours,” she clarifies. “Don’t offer if you don’t mean it.”

“I’m afraid my thoughts aren’t particularly pleasant of late,” Lexa murmurs, pretending to adjust the cutlery and dishes on the tray to avoid Clarke’s eyes. They’re still blue. But she can’t look at them without seeing the deep bruises that seem almost permanent, sunken deep into her eye sockets in alternative states of black and blue and green. She fears they’ll be there forever.

“Why?”

There’s some sick part of her that wants to snap, _‘because you were shot in the head’_. It’s inappropriate and not what Clarke needs, so Lexa gives a vague wave of her hand. “Affairs are…complicated. As always.”

“Comp-comli-hmm,” Clarke stutters, struggling with the word she means to echo as a question before giving up entirely. It had been a long while before Clarke could speak at all. Even now, many words confound her or escape her grasp. “Difficult?” She tries instead.

“Yes. Consistently so,” she agrees, reaching out absently to pull one of the furs more firmly over Clarke’s lap from where it had begun to slide off the bed. “Farmers are angry about the trading value of their crops and tradesmen are angry about the trading value of _their_ goods and overall everyone seems to think they should be worth the most. Of all things in the madness of current times, I did not expect to have an ego problem on my hands.”

Clarke laughs a little and Lexa decides it was a good idea not mentioning the political and ambassadorial devastation her attack has caused. An essentially successful attempt on Wanheda’s life has been more than a headache personally. Politically, it has been a nightmare.

In all areas that matter politically, Wanheda has been killed.

Or it would be easy if everyone agreed on that. Astoundingly, there is a disturbing majority of ambassadors who think Clarke is going through some spiritual journey or other such nonsense. Despite being the spiritual leader of her people, Lexa can’t help but regard the superstitions of her people as anything less than preposterous at times. Clarke has no idea what her own name is and there are _still_ people who would fear her – follow her, perhaps. Both send fear rattling down Lexa’s spine.

“Are you okay?”

Well considering she’s the only one in the room who hasn’t been shot in the head, she should be fine. But considering she’s the only one in the room who is _in love_ with someone who just got shot in the head, she should be allowed to _not_ be fine. It’s a conundrum to be sure.

“Heda is always fine,” she says instead. But internally she wonders if Heda wouldn’t be much better if she didn’t always have to refer to herself in the authoritative third person. “I’m fine.”

“You look sad,” Clarke counters. She seems to realize a moment later, in the face of Lexa’s surprised stare, that it might have been too forward. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m talking about. You look…just like you’re meant to look? I think? Just – just ignore me, I’m a few shingles short of a roof these days.”

Instinctively Lexa wants to reach out and grab her hand, but it feels wrong when Clarke wouldn’t even know why. “No,” she says simply, “you’re intuitive.”

The word catches on Clarke’s ears and she wrinkles her nose. “That’s…a good thing, right? That means, uh-“ she taps two of her fingers lightly over the bandage on her left temple and frowns. “It means-“

“Smart,” Lexa offers.

Clarke stiffens a little and looks away. “I know. I – I knew that.”

Okay, Clarke remembers _three_ things: John Murphy, a morally questionable film, and the stubbornness that makes up at least three-quarters of her personality.

“Of course.”

“I _did_ ,” Clarke insists, crossing her arms against her chest before Lexa can remind her of her ribs. The fallout is instant and she hisses through her teeth while her arms jerk away from her bruised and broken bones – an unfortunate byproduct of Abby’s attempts to save her daughter’s life.

Without intending to, Lexa had taken a few hurried steps forward, her hands hovering nervously over Clarke’s body. “Are you alright?” She whispers, floundering and unsure where to soothe or help. Bedside manners were not skills Nightbloods received and Lexa felt like a full-grown bear attempting calligraphy. Actually, she felt like herself attempting calligraphy – even worse.

Abby was an artist at the bedsides of the sick and dying – one of the few skills Lexa begrudgingly admired her for. The woman didn’t so much as blink when she told Clarke who she was dozens of time before the sun went down, tireless and patient and everything Lexa wishes she was. Because the two things Lexa feels more keenly every day is tired and impatient.

“Not really,” Clarke grumbles, prodding gently at her ribs with small winces. “Why does it feel like someone broke all my – uh, my-“ her movements still while she digs for words she should know. “My…chest bones,” she finishes lamely, unable to come up with the word she needs.

Lexa looks down at her feet. “Because you broke some of your…chest bones.”

“Ain’t that just the way,” Clarke mumbles to herself, accepting as always. Some days these constant revelations frustrated her, drove her to spitting anger even, when nothing made sense. Most days, though, she merely accepted it all with an air of understanding that they were just bits of information glancing off of her, spinning out into the void nearly seconds after making contact. “Oof. They really – they really hurt. Why does everything hurt all the time?”

Lexa very much wondered that too.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Lexa offers, and she means it as a comfort but as always she feels she gets everything wrong.

Clarke blinks in surprise. “O-oh. I _am?_ ”

“Er, well, yes. That is – you’re recovering as Abby predicted…more or less.”

Clarke gives her an odd sort of smile, confused but unwilling to voice it. She nods like she understands, but it doesn’t quell the look of vague panic that seems to plague her constantly. “Yeah. Right,” she says quietly.

Most days, Lexa doesn’t bother, but she doesn’t want to hide things from Clarke so she proceeds with caution. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Um. Kind of,” Clarke hedges, tugging on the ends of her hair again and refusing to meet Lexa’s eyes. Lexa has come to understand what it means. It means she doesn’t remember. It means Clarke believes if she _wants_ it bad enough, maybe she can will it into being. It means she’s embarrassed.

Lexa probes gently, careful not to accuse or upset. “You remember being attacked?”

“Yes.” Clarke nods, creating her own artificial memories from what she’s told. “Yeah.”

“You remember the Ark? Arcadia?”

“The Ark?”

Lexa nods. “The ship you are from. It’s where your mother and your friends live.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay,” Clarke says more confidently. “I think I do.”

Clarke’s insistence when it came to memory was baffling to Lexa, but Abby did not share this surprise. In fact, Abby predicted Clarke’s tendency toward lying about the extent of her memory loss. It is, as always, a science – or magic, perhaps – beyond Lexa’s grasp. The Skaikru just…know things.

“Do you remember where you are now?”

“Uh, yep. I’m…home?”

The answer takes Lexa by surprise and she’s not sure if it’s a lucky guess or not – it _is_ a fairly general answer and it _is_ intuitive – but it makes her stupidly happy and she decides she doesn’t want to know. She wants Clarke to have _recognized,_ not guessed correctly.

“That’s right,” she says warmly. “You’re in Polis.”

“Polis,” Clarke confirms, rolling the word around in her mouth. “Yeah.”

Two questions left – she doesn’t always ask the first three, but she never forgets the last two.

“Do you remember who you are?” Lexa asks, trying to sound supportive and without condescension. Of all the questions, it is the most likely to bring Clarke’s temper to the surface. She may not ever answer it correctly, but it _has_ brought the most creative deflections (and insults) out of her. “Do you remember your name?”

“The Ghost of Christmas past,” Clarke says cheekily, reaching for the cup on her bedside table in a less than artful attempt at diversion.

Lexa swears that if she never hears reference to Skaikru’s blasphemous films and queer pagan propaganda again it will be too soon. At sunrise, Clarke had claimed to be Ebenezer Scrooge. If Skaikru had not been present to decipher Clarke’s references to that ancient story near the beginning of Clarke’s recovery, Lexa is sure she would have given her up for mad long ago. Not that she’s much farther from that now.

But still.

“Do you remember your name?” Lexa repeats, stern around the edges, but soft where it matters. Soft where she tries. (God, does she try.)

Clarke scoffs – as she is wont to do – and gives Lexa a sympathetic look. “If you forgot my name, you could’ve just asked.”

Despite expecting a wry response, it doesn’t stop Lexa from letting out a small sigh and giving her a flat look. “I did not forget your name.”

“Prove it.”

Lexa smiles at the evasion and gives it up. “Your name is Clarke.”

A flash of recognition passes across Clarke’s face and she nods happily. “Well, alright. Nice save.” As though Lexa weren’t even there, Clarke repeats her own name a few times under her breath, determined yet again to remember it. Maybe she will succeed, but her record is against her.

And that, as always, brings them to the last question Lexa feels compelled to ask at least once a day – sometimes upwards of three or four times if she’s feeling particularly destructive. It is, after all, the worst kind of self-flagellation. It’s masochistic at best.

“Do you remember who I am?” Lexa asks, pitiful with hope even after weeks of asking – pathetic and more in love than Heda has any right to be.

Clarke narrows her eyes like it’s a trick question, her gaze flicking across Lexa’s face like the answer might be written somewhere there. It used to be. It’s not anymore.

“The Ghost of Christmas…present?”

Lexa wrestles unsuccessfully with a scowl that has Clarke giddy with childish satisfaction.

“Wait, no-“ Clarke holds her hands up, fingers wiggling dramatically. “The Ghost of Christmas Future.”

“Clarke I-“

“No, no,” Clarke cuts her off, “you gotta ask why.”

“Why?” Lexa intones flatly.

Clarke leans forward on one of her unsteady elbows – still so weak even weeks after her injury – and levels a look at Lexa so full of life its hard to remember how close she had been to death. “Because all you talk about is my death.”

Lexa, at best, _permits_ the laughter that follows. A memory of a similar conversation tugs and pinches at the back of Lexa’s brain, but she hushes it and wrestles it back into the recesses of her memory – back into the place she keeps all things Clarke. All things she will never have again.

“Be serious,” Lexa eventually sighs. “Do you have any idea who I am?”

Heda does not _plead_.

And yet.

“You…” Clarke frowns and one of her hands comes up as though she might touch Lexa’s face, but it drops after a moment. “I…”

Lexa tries not to deflate too obviously. “It is alright, Clarke.” After all, she knows it isn’t for lack of trying. If she upsets Clarke too much, she’ll spend the rest of the day with her poor, injured skull throbbing and even more confused than she began it. In their eagerness, they had spent the first week of having Clarke mostly alert bombarding her with questions and information and stimulation. Of all people it had been Murphy who had to kindly request Clarke’s well-wishers, ‘cram their ceaseless bullshitting up their own asses’ before Clarke ‘blew a gasket’. Lexa understood very little of it and all of it at the same time.

“No,” Clarke says quickly, shaking her head. “It’s not. I don’t get a free pass on hurting people because I can’t be bothered to remember I did it.”

Lexa had wondered, when first realizing that Clarke knew next to nothing of her past life upon waking, whether she was even still Clarke. Without our memories and experiences, are we even ourselves? Moments like this proved her wrong. Clarke was, somehow, and in the basest of ways, still very much…Clarke.

“It’s okay not to remember, Clarke. I will remind you as many times as you need me to.” And for today at least, Lexa means it. She proves it with a kind smile, though maybe it’s a little watery around the edges lately. Maybe.

Clarke returns it with something like relief, as though she constantly expects to be berated for forgetting or becoming confused. There’s always a wariness about the Skaikru children as though they are dogs preparing for the next beating. “I – I remember you,” Clarke assures her. “You…work here?”

Surprisingly it makes Lexa laugh. “I – well, yes. I _do_ work here.”

“Am I good or what?”

Lexa rolls her eyes good-naturedly, but agrees anyways. “You’re very good.”

“No, no, you’re supposed to say ‘or what’,” Clarke teases, reaching out absently to take the hand Lexa had rested on the edge of the bedspread. The action takes only Lexa by surprise, because it seems Clarke hasn’t noticed the unconscious habit. In fact, she continues without so much as glancing down at their intertwined fingers. Lexa feels like she’s dying and Clarke feels nothing. “You say ‘or what’. You don’t work here, come on. I can see it in your eyes.”

Astute as ever, Lexa notes. “In a sense, you were correct,” she defends. “It feels like I never _stop_ working here.”

Clarke’s grip tightens. “But you’re more…to me, that is. I’m supposed to know you, right? I’ve upset you,” she frets.

On the contrary, they rarely even get that close to recognition. Lexa shakes her head and tries to ease the tension out of Clarke’s hand by soothing the pad of her thumb over her stiff knuckles. “I’m not upset.”

“I upset everyone. At least Murphy yells at me,” Clarke mutters.

Lexa stiffens. “He should not,” she says sternly. “I will have a word with him.”

“Don’t bother,” Clarke says, gesturing vaguely. “It makes me feel normal. I didn’t even know it was possible to forget about forgetting. Like, he has to _remind_ me that I’m forgetful. Of all things!” Huffing out an exasperated sigh, Clarke blinks heavily and Lexa can see the constant fatigue that plagues her taking over. “I keep forgetting that I’ve forgotten,” she muses quietly.

Lexa nods sympathetically. “It is only temporary,” she lies, because the truth is that she doesn’t know. Abby seems to know everything about injury and recovery and even Clarke’s future is clouded and uncertain to her. The fact that Clarke sits there speaking coherently is nothing short of a miracle. But when all is said and done, Clarke will either forget her merciful lies or she’ll remember them as truths. The moral ambiguity of it requires more agonizing than Lexa particularly has room for of late.

Heda is too busy to agonize.

Or some other such nonsense Lexa has a hard time abiding by.

Clarke blinks some more, eyelids heavy as she sinks back into the pillows behind her, but she still won’t let go of Lexa’s hand. “I guess,” she says uncertainly and it’s clear she only gives in because she’s too tired.

“You’re safe here,” Lexa assures her then adds, “with me. Whatever you forget, this is your home. I will remember _for_ you.”

Amused, Clarke hums a tired laugh while her eyes slip shut. “Very kind of you, Commander. Very generous.”

Lexa thinks something might explode in her brain in that moment, a painful kind of focus snapping her attention to Clarke’s sleepy mumbling. She holds her breath, trying to read a novel in Clarke’s lax face and slow breathing. But it’s just like it has been every _other_ time.

When Lexa can no longer hold her breath, she releases it slowly, forcing herself not to live in a single word – a single recognition – for the rest of her life. “For you? Anything,” she whispers while Clarke sleeps soundly.

 

+++

 

_There are lessons Nightbloods are expected to carry in their hearts and on their shoulders and carved into their armor in battle – lessons to keep them strong and immortal and safe. These lessons elevate them, anoint them as gods and pump strength and charisma through their veins with the black of their blood._

_Death is glorious. Death is not the end._

_(Death is not glorious, though, and Lexa has never felt anything so final as the last rasp of a pained breath or the mist in unseeing eyes.)_

_Blood must have blood. No life is worth more than another._

_(But puddles of red, soaked tunics and crimson dripping from blades doesn’t seize her heart or her stomach because Nightbloods bleed black and the red of death does not remind her of her own. Red is the color of Others. Black is the color of Heda. When men die by her blade it is a red death she cannot empathize with – not in the most visceral sense – and it does not seize her heart with the cold fear of finality. She does not bleed like them. Red is not black. Some blood will always be worth less and that sense of otherness hardens her heart and makes her strong.)_

_To be Heda is to be alone._

_(Always, kind eyes and gentle souls and the cloying, clogging depth of selfless kindness seeks to usurp this. Always love will claw at her mortality more than the most brutal battle, the strongest warrior under her blade. If Heda were truly alone, Heda would have no need of successors. Heda would be immortal.)_

_(But she isn’t.)_

_(Heda is never alone and it will kill her again and again and again until the Nightblood runs dry and the line is broken and the flame is lost because love is as inevitable as it is fatal – as rapturous as it is tragic.)_

_(There will be no coming back from it.)_

_And so her teachings are, as always, an ideal – a carefully crafted theory of perfection that would surely be successful if it’s theorizer had lived in the vacuum they designed it in. It is a useless theory. Armchair philosophy to whisper to yourself when you’re lost and you no longer have the courage to admit that to be Heda is not to be alone, equal, or glorious in death. To be Heda is to be lost._

_Clarke is shot during a festival and Lexa is lost._

 

+++

 

Some days are just worse than others. Lexa knows this from being in a unique position of inheriting a long line of intuition and memory from a lineage of rulers very much used to the notion that life is terrible most of the time. And the one thing the Flame has taught her is that it can somehow always get worse. Lexa likes to attribute her cheery disposition to such positive whisperings in her head.

Clarke gets angry. Frequently.

So at least some things haven’t changed.

Abby is, as always, an impenetrable fortress of patience and clinical professionalism. Despite their many and vast differences, Abby reminds Lexa of Nyko, who handles Clarke in a similarly impressive manner if not on a less frequent basis. But Abby trusts only him when she is otherwise indisposed, so Lexa has to accept that goodwill and mutual respect can overcome even the largest ravines between peoples.

The day is still young when Clarke falls into one of her sporadic episodes of unfiltered rage. Abby discovers that Clarke cannot read and Clarke discovers that nothing is working the way it should be. Or rather, the way she supposes it should be. Clarke cannot strictly remember what she should be able to do, but it does not stop her from cursing at her mother and swiping a handful of delicate, worn books to the ground.

Lexa hears all of this second hand before being summoned by Raven. Heda is not _summoned_. And yet.

“Commander,” Abby greets, her eyes the only thing giving away the hint of relief she feels.

Lexa dips her head in the shallowest of nods. “Abby?”

“Heda,” Nyko echoes, sketching an awkward dip of his torso from his position crouched on the floor collecting an array of scattered books.

Lexa opens her mouth to return his greeting, but lets the unformed words die in the back of her throat when she spies Clarke pacing angrily along the back wall of her room. Her balance is poor and her eyesight is sending her bumping into furniture on each pass across the back wall. She’s spitting curses under her breath of a variety even more creative than usual. Dryly, Lexa thanks the gods for providing another completely useless memory for Clarke to reclaim from her attack. Gods forbid she forgets anything in her arsenal of blasphemy.

“Why is she out of bed?” Lexa asks shortly, sending a sharp look towards Nyko. She does not trust Abby to heed any of her orders, but Nyko should know better. “She should not be walking around yet.”

“Tell _her_ that,” Nyko grumbles. It is the closest he has ever gotten to disrespect, which leaves Lexa wondering exactly what Clarke has done to the hapless healer.

Abby shrugs helplessly. “She doesn’t understand why she can’t see or read. And she doesn’t remember anyone right now. I don’t think she knows where she is.”

It does happen on occasion, but the incidents of complete confusion had been growing more infrequent of late. Wishful to think they would ever be free of them entirely.

Clarke stumbles into the wardrobe for the umpteenth time and sags against it. “Well,” Lexa says awkwardly, stroking along the hilt of her ceremonial sword. She had been called away from an important meeting of one of her ambassadors’ committees. They showed little understanding. “It seems she’s tiring out,” she offers, wincing at the tactlessness of her own words. Clarke is not an overactive dog that needs to be allowed to chase a shadow until it’s worn out by its own ignorance.

Clarke bangs her knee on the desk in the corner of the room and shouts at it some more.

“Or not,” Lexa sighs. “I’ll handle it.”

It’s laughable. Clarke was the one thing Lexa was never able to ‘handle’. Clarke is not something meant to be ‘handled’. But she can certainly try if it will reduce the number of bruises on Clarke’s shins at the end of the day.

Lexa approaches cautiously, unsure of whether to initiate physical contact or not. She decides against it, merely clearing her throat loudly and offering her arm to the stumbling girl.

“Clarke.”

Clarke whips around, eyes struggling to focus on Lexa. She’s instantly suspicious, shrinking into the wall as much as she can force her body against it. Her nose is bleeding again – just the slightest bit – and she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. Abby insists it is normal, not to worry about it – but, well, Heda was born to worry.

“Who are you?” She asks with a quiet, deadly intensity. It is reminiscent of Wanheda’s old authority, but laced with an undercurrent of fear that grips Lexa’s heart in a snug, mildly uncomfortable vice.

Lexa doesn’t move any closer, unwilling to set her off. “Lexa.”

Clarke stares through unfocused eyes for a full minute, deliberate and seemingly without breathing. “Are you…” she trails off and glances to the side out one of the windows. “Are you going to hurt me too?”

“No, Clarke,” Lexa returns, guilt gnawing at the base of her spine. “Nobody’s going to hurt you, least of all me.”

Clarke is still staring out the window, fingers pressed so tightly against the wall behind her that they’ve gone white. Or perhaps it’s a byproduct of the pale quality her skin had taken on of late. “I don’t think I believe you,” she says.

Lexa frowns. “Why not? Why do you think someone’s going to hurt you?”

At that, Clarke releases a long sigh, eyes still glued to the weak morning light filtering over the stone floor. “Because they always do.”

And…well, is she wrong? Lexa cannot deny it, so decides it is not a fight worth having.

“Won’t you come back to bed?” She implores gently.

Clarke seems to be tiring rapidly. “I can’t see,” she says numbly to nobody in particular. “I can’t see well at all. I don’t know what’s happening and I don’t know why. Am I being punished?”

Perhaps. But in the moment it feels more like Lexa is the one being punished. “Not by me. You can trust me,” she tries, offering her arm again.

Clarke finally looks back at her, pushing against the wall to compensate for the sag in her knees. She drags the back of her arm across her nose, clearing the congealing blood from her lip before it runs down anew. “I don’t know anything,” she chokes out. “How do I know that? How do I trust you?”

Lexa considers it a moment before shrugging helplessly. “You can start by taking my arm. After that, we can figure it out as we go.”

And, miraculously, she does.

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whatever. the story was finished a while ago. it's 5 chapters, i'll throw one up per week probably. cheers if you like it, cheers if you don't. i didn't quit my day job or nothing so im good either way.
> 
> stay pony golden boys.


	2. the first of the three spirits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> checking this story after posting the first chapter was exactly like putting out the garbage, going back inside, then looking out my kitchen window to see no less than 500 raccoons staring at me from my trash bins.
> 
> yall will eat anything these days.
> 
> next chap early for u hungry children. also, i don't have an english degree and i imagine most of you don't either so lets just be real and spell out the fact that everything in italics is a flashback. the flashback sequences are in order. the present sequences are in order. that's probably mostly clear, but we dont have the time or the funding to play 'most pretentious creative writing major' today.
> 
> but i do have the time and funding to heartily abuse authors notes.  
> enjoy.

+++

 

_Lexa has never liked festivals._

_On behalf of her people, she must admit the emotional and social benefits celebratory events provide for the network of Polis and outlying territories’ clans and families. It is difficult to miss the physical manifestation of joy when observing such celebrations – the laughter, the camaraderie, the smiling and whooping and dancing and feasting. Objectively, these are good measurements of goodwill and health._

_But, Lexa cannot help but harbor the thought. She never liked festivals._

_Festivals are loud and costly and work-intensive, requiring weeks of planning and stocking. But mostly they are loud. If Lexa did not have to provide the public appearance and support of Heda, then she likely would never attend. She wished she would never attend._

_Clarke does not share these feelings._

_Lexa watches on, a sour expression on her face and a politician constantly at her side, while Clarke enjoys the festivities. Clarke aids Raven in an exposition of Skaikru technology for a crowd of fascinated warriors and children and laborers – it seems nobody is above curiosity now that Skaikru are acclimating to the coalition. Beyond that, Clarke plays games with the children, pays respects to every baker and food vendor that shoves complimentary gifts into her hands, and dances with every fresh-faced warrior cocky and green enough to offer her a dance._

_Lexa will have to keep an eye on that._

_One of the Desert Clan’s…well, some sort of official is drawling on and on about some tax philosophy in Lexa’s ear while she nods and watches Clarke lift a boy barely knee-high under his arms to reach a dessert from the counter of a food stand. By the time the vendor turns around to check his wares, the boy has fled with a wicked grin on his face, leaving Clarke in the lurch. Clarke is so easily fooled by the carefully constructed innocence of Polis’s children that Lexa has to stop herself from laughing in the Desert Clansman’s face. The mighty Wanheda is suspicious of everything from ambassadors to her morning biscuits, but cannot see the scheme in a child’s eye for the life of her. Lexa doesn’t imagine that will change anytime soon._

_Clarke is apologizing to the vendor, who doesn’t seem to know what to do in her presence and the whole scene brings a rare grin to Lexa’s face before she can cover it._

_The Desert Clansman nods excitedly, mistaking her grin for one of genuine interest and agreement. He proceeds to be twice as annoying and persistent and explicit in his blustering history of clan taxation. But that’s just what Heda gets for expressing joy._

_Her error forces her to watch Clarke dance with three additional, naively daring warriors before she is able to escape her captor. The time to be coy has passed – sometime between the third dance request and a questionably gifted flower by a precocious child – and Lexa takes a direct route to where Clarke is speaking with another one of her relentless warriors._

_(Honestly, did they have nothing better to do?)_

_There are few benefits to being Heda, but Lexa figures she should take those benefits where they arise. She comes up directly behind Clarke, ceremonial armor bumping into Clarke’s back with the aggressive proximity, and gives her conversation partner a cool look. Despite evidence to the contrary, the warrior has enough sense to stammer an excuse, bow awkwardly to his commander, and melt back into the crowd._

_It is supremely satisfying._

_Clarke casts her a glance over her shoulder, half exasperation, half amusement. “Can I help you?” She teases, nudging her elbow back into the armor pressing into her back._

_Lexa doesn’t budge. It is about as close as they have ever been in public. No matter Heda’s personal affairs, it does not due to show favor or emote too strongly under watch of careful eyes. She leans in though, speaking into Clarke’s ear. The crowd’s noise is not so overwhelming that it is_ necessary _persay, but one could make the argument that it was. If need be._

_“I did not know you liked dancing so much,” Lexa says with a hint of accusation._

_Clarke hums, turning her head slightly. “Oh, I don’t. I just love awkwardly cocky adolescent warriors with two left feet.”_

_Lexa frowns. “I was not aware. I must be a grave disappointment then.”_

_“Yeah, definitely. You’re not my type at all, Commander,” she says critically, making to walk away. Lexa catches her arm discreetly and keeps her pressed against the front of her breastplate. “Can I help you?” Clarke repeats._

_“Do you enjoy doing this to me?” Lexa laughs in her ear. Hiding jealousy is not one of her talents. So why bother hiding it at all?_

_Clarke nods without hesitation. “Absolutely.”_

_“Must you?”_

_“Absolutely.”_

_Lexa laughs again and releases her arm, expecting Clarke to go off again to vastly improve someone’s night with a tale about dancing with Wanheda. Clarke surprises her by leaning back against her armor. It is perhaps one of the more intimate positions they had ever been in a public venue. She doesn’t say anything, just sags into Lexa’s breastplate and blows out a contented sigh._

_“I hate festivals,” Lexa confides, turning her head to press her nose briefly to Clarke’s temple. She smells of the woodsmoke from the giant fire pits and home. “I really do.”_

_Clarke nods, unsurprised. “I know. You hate fun.”_

_“I despise it.”_

_Lexa feels Clarke’s smile more than sees it. “But you like me, right?” She asks._

_Lexa shakes her head. “No, I don’t like you either.”_

 

+++

 

 

Clarke isn’t in her room when Lexa goes to see her next and it tosses her headfirst into paralyzing dread. She’s terrified and truthfully she doesn’t know why. Clarke can’t have gone too far. She would have been notified if Clarke had taken a turn for the worse. Or gods forbid, passed.

They would have retrieved her from an agricultural meeting of all things.

Would they not?

When her heart’s had time to lift itself from her stomach where it plummeted minutes ago, she unlocks her knees and forces her feet out of the room. It’s quiet in the hallway and while she knows _she_ is the one to request it remain that way, it only makes her angry in the moment. In light of the attempt on Wanheda’s life, Lexa had agreed with Titus’s surprisingly charitable suggestion that Clarke be hidden away without the army of guards Lexa was bent on arming her with. It made sense at the time: a mass of personal guards would only indicate to the whispering mouths of Polis that Wanheda was in danger and where exactly one might find her. She finds a guard at the end of the hallway and pushes into his personal space.

“Where is she?” She demands through his flinching and spluttering.

He regains himself and looks briefly over her shoulder. “Wanheda?”

Lexa flares her nostrils and clenches a hand around the hilt of her sword. “To whom else would I be referring?” She hisses.

The guard is confused now, lurching like he means to go through Lexa and take off down the hallway to Clarke’s room. “She – she is not in bed?”

“Right. I must have forgotten to _check_ there,” Lexa fumes.

“Apologies Heda, she has not – she hasn’t come by me. She must be within this wing,” he offers. When she only glares harder, he nods quickly. “I will help you look, Heda.”

The wing only has three rooms: Clarke’s room, the old cartography lab, and an abandoned observatory that had fallen into disarray as a storage room before Lexa had even ascended. It was as out of the way as she could find on short notice. If only assassins gave advanced notice when they were going to shoot your loved ones in the head. Alas.

Hapless and full of nothing more useful than pointless apologies, the guard had gone to do one last sweep of Clarke’s room – on the off chance his Heda had become as nearsighted as _he_ apparently was – before checking the cartography lab. Lexa headed for the far end of the hall to sort through the chaos of the retired observatory.

She hadn’t been in the room since stumbling upon it at some young age of a dozen summers when she was hiding from Titus. Memory serves her correctly about the space: it’s chaos. The stewards of the tower had long since given up pretending it wasn’t a dumping ground for anything that had outlived its usefulness. Towers of rickety shelving loom above the twisting path she is forced to take through the massive hall. Light filters weakly from between towering stacks of books, scrolls, old world trinkets and failed experiments. Heaps of tapestries, never ending coils of wire and useless technologies threaten to trip and ensnare her forever as she picks her way through the swirling dust moats and crushing silence. It’s reminiscent of a tomb – reserved for the retired relics of a kingdom in forward motion.

Finally, by some divine blessing, she catches a glimpse of blonde hair while swinging around the corner of a shelf that is, quite literally, on its last legs. Lexa does a jerking double take, almost missing her entirely. She’s just standing there in a long cotton tunic that barely reaches her knees, back turned so Lexa can’t quite see her face. She’s thinner than Lexa remembers – paler and smaller too, perhaps. Her shoulders are so much smaller than Lexa remembers them. She swears Clarke’s shoulders must have been bigger when she placed the weight of a civilization on them. She’d swear it. But Clarke’s standing on her own two legs and, baring her alarming bid for freedom, the girl seems fine.

“Clarke.”

Startling slightly, Clarke turns her head to give Lexa a relieved smile. “You scared me. Warn a girl next time, Marley.”

The irony of the accusation is far from lost on Lexa. “Marley?” She asks, rolling the strange name against her tongue.

“Marley’s ghost. Christmas carol. I feel like we’ve been over this.”

They definitely have.

“We definitely have not.”

Clarke doesn’t seem to believe her, but the hole in her brain would hinder a full prosecution of the lie. She hums suspiciously and leaves it at that.

“You were not in bed,” Lexa says, relief coloring her tone perhaps a bit more obviously than she would care for. It would exasperate Clarke if she had any inkling as to how many times Lexa had panicked and fetched her company just for the ease of mind it provided. It would bother her to know how little the ambassardors and chieftains try to empathize with Lexa’s frequent tardiness and absence so she can hold the hand of a girl who will likely never recognize her again. It would bother her how Heda _worries_. It _used_ to bother her to no end. She doesn’t remember, though, and just smiles that confused little smile she’s taken to.

“I was not,” Clarke agrees, one eyebrow raised in jest.

Lexa crosses her arms and sighs, determined not to pout because Heda _certainly_ does not pout. “You’re supposed to be.”

Clarke’s smile only widens. “I forgot.”

“Convenient.”

Nodding, Clarke turns back to whatever she had been staring at before. “Somehow I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being _convenient_.”

Clarke has no idea how right she is. Rather than point that out, though, Lexa just sighs and picks her way through the clutter to stand at Clarke’s side. Alarmingly, Clarke is staring at…nothing. She’s staring at nothing and Lexa represses the impatient grimace bubbling just under the surface.

“Why are you here?” She tries diplomatically.

Clarke cocks her head to the side in thought for a moment. “I don’t remember.”

Before Lexa can do anything ill advised like sigh or, gods forbid, roll her eyes, Clarke shoots her a smile. “Just kidding,” she says. Lexa wants to make a retort or demand an explanation, but Clarke is staring at her through bruised eyes and she’s wearing that expression she has when she’s unwilling to ask for help she desperately needs. Lexa only recognizes it so easily because of how often she has to see it in a mirror.

Clarke’s paling quickly, her knees are shaking a little, and her hands are grasping at nothing and twitching like they mean to reach out for something to hold onto. It would be easy to reach out and steady her or maybe even just scoop her up and whisk her back to her room, but Lexa knows it would only have made Clarke angry before the attack. She imagines it would go over about as well now as it would have back then.

Instead, she offers her arm for Clarke to take or turn down, extending her autonomy like it was never in question. Of course, Clarke still makes a show of considering the offer and shrugging like she’s making some sacrifice for Lexa’s sake before taking the offered support. The only thing that gives her away is how heavily she leans into it.

“Back to your room, then?” Lexa asks, placing her other hand over the one on her arm.

Clarke nods a wordless reply and Lexa begins leading them back through the maze. She keeps stealing glances at Clarke, wondering what drove her from bed after weeks of confinement. Probably pure spite if she’s being honest with herself.

“Are you feeling alright?” She asks instead.

Clarke nods slowly and adjusts her grip on Lexa’s forearm. “Yeah – yeah, I’m alright. I, uh, well –“ she cuts off, looking up towards the ceiling beams with a hitch of embarrassment. “Forget it.”

“Are you sure?”

Shrugging weakly, Clarke faces forward in a bid to end the conversation. It occurs to Lexa, once again, that Clarke probably isn’t sure whom she would be entrusting any confession to at that moment. Most of the time, Clarke only has a vague inkling that whoever comes to take care of her must have _some_ kind of close relationship with her. Beyond that, however, she is mostly wary of revealing too much.

Lexa slows to a stop some twenty paces before the door, forcing Clarke to stop as well and give her a cautious look. “Nothing you tell me will leave my confidence, Clarke,” she says seriously. “You must know that.”

Clarke shrugs again, eyes wandering. “Yeah. I – yeah, I’m sure. It’s not a big deal. Just…what is this place?”

“Here?” Lexa looks around the senseless clutter. “It used to be an observatory. I suppose it is just a storage room now.”

“A storage room for what?”

Lexa considers, tilting her head to the side. “I’m not sure,” she says honestly. “Things that nobody wants anymore – things that have outlived their purpose and we don’t know what to do with them. Most of these things are broken or useless.”

Lexa tries to pull Clarke forward, but her feet are planted firmly while she takes in the room of relics and refuse with an odd sort of reverence. “Yes. I see now,” Clarke murmurs.

Something about the look on Clarke’s face makes Lexa turn to her with a question on her tongue. “Why were you in here, Clarke?”

She shrugs and glances lazily at Lexa, the exhaustion apparent in the droop of her bruised eyes. “Same reason, probably.”

“The same reason as what?”

Clarke nods at the their surroundings. “Same reason as everything else in here.” The words are sucked right out of Lexa’s throat, leaving them in a heavy silence that seems to weigh more on her than it does Clarke. Before she can think of how to respond, Clarke yawns and tugs them toward the door. “There’s something peaceful about this room, no?”

“I think it’s sad,” Lexa returns quietly.

Clarke shrugs again, casting the room one last look before they leave. “I think it just _is_.”

Before they can make it back to Clarke’s room, she stops them again to peer into the cartography lab where the guard is still looking frantically under every table. Lexa stops herself from reminding him that Clarke is not an animal and he need not check every floorboard.

“Oh, yeah,” Clarke says, recognition sparking in her eyes. “I was looking for _this_ room.”

Lexa pauses and raises one eyebrow in confusion. “The cartography lab?”

“The maps.”

“Why were you looking for maps?”

Clarke shook her head with a small smile. “I don’t know. I just like them.”

 

+++

 

_“Clarke, why do you feel the need to buy more charcoal when I know with certainty that there is not a single storage unit in our room that could accommodate any more?”_

_Clarke shoots her a smile and Lexa knows she has already lost. “I don’t know. I just like them.”_

_“Well,” Lexa says slowly, more to herself than anything, “that would certainly explain why we have so many.”_

_Clarke hears her anyways and digs her elbow into the soft spot in Heda’s armor, right at her hip. She purchases the charcoals anyways._

_“You know, you only have two hands,” Lexa hums close to her ear as Clarke wanders off to make more ill-advised purchases. Festivals always leave Clarke’s pockets empty, though she claims it is only to support the vendors in Polis and provide her emotional and financial support of their ventures. Lexa is fairly sure Clarke just has low impulse control._

_Clarke’s elbow hits her hip again and Lexa winces. “Why do you insist on telling me things I already know?”_

_Lexa catches Clarke’s elbow before it can retreat and keeps her close in the pulsing crowd. “Heda lives to serve.”_

_“Heda lives to annoy.”_

_Lexa suppresses a smile. She’s opening her mouth with another cheeky response when someone bumps into them, causing Clarke to stumble a few steps forward. Before Lexa can response appropriately – perhaps by beheading the intruder or having his legs removed at the knees – he’s disappeared back into the crowd with nothing more than a dark look thrown over his shoulder._

_For a moment Lexa stands there, torn between stopping him and returning to the light atmosphere of the festival. She remembers Clarke, though, and turns away from where the man disappeared and finds the other girl trying to steady herself._

_“Are you alright?” She asks, reaching out to hold Clarke’s forearm._

_Clarke does not respond immediately, eyes wandering over the crowd around them, with a low burning suspicion. When she does find her voice, there’s something worried on the edge of it. “Did you – did you recognize that man?”_

_“No. Did you?”_

_Her expression is thoughtful but frustrated, like there’s something just out of reach. “I – well, he did seem familiar. I’m sure it’s nothing.”_

_“When has something ever been nothing?” Lexa mutters. “I’ll go find him,” she says resolutely, making to stalk off into the crowd and drag the elusive man back._

_Clarke stops her, though, with a soft touch to the inside of her arm. When Lexa looks back, she’s shaking her head. “No, I’m sure I was mistaken. And so what if he was familiar?”_

_“Clarke, nearly everyone familiar to you has tried to kill you.” She frowns pointedly and makes a frustrated gesture. “Including me.” She straightens her belt, tucking her sword closer at hand and tries to depart again._

_Clarke manages to twist her hands into the fabric at the back of Lexa’s jacket and stop her. “Please, Lexa,” she begs. “Please forget it.”_

_“Why?” Lexa huffs. “You’ve turned down nearly all of your guards and forced my hand on lessened security. You’ve demanded unfiltered access to the fairgrounds and-“_

_“And I’m a huge pain in your ass. I know, I know,” Clarke soothes. Lexa starts when she feels Clarke press her forehead between her shoulder blades. She stiffens, fingers wrapping tightly around the hilt of her sword. She’s not entirely sure what to do with her hands so the other one flounders at her side. It is a rare day indeed when Wanheda shows affection freely. It is…concerning._

_“Are you feeling alright?” Lexa asks quietly, trying to catch a glimpse of the girl over her shoulder._

_She feels more than sees Clarke nod against her. “Yeah, just – please. Please don’t go after him. Things are so good right now – no skirmishes since last summer and the bandits are quiet and – and people are less frightened, slower to violence.” Finally, she takes a proprietary step back and Lexa can turn to eye her curiously. “Just let it go.”_

_Lexa wants badly to refuse her, but…well, that grows more difficult every day. And, for the most part, Clarke is right. Ill-advised, but right. “Very well,” she finally sighs, rubbing at the back of her neck. “Keep that guard with you,” she grumbles, indicating the man lingering a few paces back who had been following discreetly for the better part of the season. Clarke took great pleasure in escaping his company at every opportunity. Childishly._

_Clarke glances back at him and rolls her eyes. “Ugh.”_

_“Don’t you think you’ve tested me enough today?”_

_“Not really,” Clarke says honestly. “But fine. The buzzkill can follow me for the rest of my life for all I care.”_

_“I don’t know what that means. But you should not call him names,” Lexa chides. “He has sworn his life to you.”_

_“Oh, I definitely wasn’t referring to him,_ Heda _.”_

_“Well, I swore my life to you too. You should not call me names either.”_

_Clarke laughs heartily at that, but it’s with an adoration that still manages to send Lexa’s heart stuttering and her ears burning. “Ah, but you’re right,” Clarke finally manages through her laughter. “I should be nicer to you. Would you care for a dance?”_

_“No, I’m cross with you now.”_

_“That’s fine, Rook will dance with me.”_

_They both look over to the surly guard lingering in their periphery, Clarke with mischief and Lexa with severe doubt. He did not look like a dancing man._

_Sure enough, he takes one look at the gleam in Clarke’s eyes and shakes his head firmly. It’s unlikely he even knows what Clarke is asking him, but he has probably dealt with her enough to know it was best to always decline._

 

+++

 

Clarke has lost many things besides her memories. It is easy to forget this. Lexa frequently catches herself in a single-minded obsession with Clarke’s memories – obsessed to the point that she forgets about the other struggles Clarke faces.

Speech was only difficult for a few days. But reading has been lost to her. Reading and writing and _drawing_. And there’s the true tragedy of it: the artist struggling against a world without the mercy for art has been deprived of not only the time and patience for the talent, but also the bare ability of a sure hand. Clarke cannot draw. Her hands shake constantly and the grip she keeps her charcoal in is awkward and clumsy. The gods rob her of everything and leave her with nothing.

Lexa thought, perhaps, she was doing Clarke a kindness when she showed her fantastic works of art preserved by the historians of Polis. It was a ploy to spark some interest (and maybe some memories) within the recovering girl. And it likely did, if the increase in requests for parchment and charcoal were anything to go by. But the requests were a source of frustration for the poor girl rather than a joy. Clumsy lines and shaky shapes filled discarded parchment as it littered the floor around Clarke’s bed – a mounting eulogy to some long-lost love that Clarke couldn’t even remember enough to properly mourn.

But perhaps that is too poetic for the reality of it.

“I dunno,” Clarke muses, holding her drawing at arms length and squinting through her better eye. “What do you think?” She asks, turning the parchment to where Lexa sits going through correspondences she’s neglected the past few weeks. Lexa had ordered a desk into Clarke’s new room nearly a week past. If she could no longer shirk her duties and could not let Clarke out of her sight, she would have to compromise.

Lexa regards the shaky drawing with a similarly critical expression. It is, unfortunately, repellant of and resilient to praise.

It is awful.

“Looks good,” Lexa says, nodding firmly and turning back to her letter for fear of being ensnared by her own lie. “Very good.”

Clarke raises an eyebrow and holds the drawing closer to her own face. “No, I’m talking about the thing in my hands. What do you think of _this_?” She insists, offering the abominable drawing more fiercely in Lexa’s general direction.

“I said it looks good,” Lexa insists to some point to the side of Clarke’s head. There was nearly no soul Heda could not convincingly lie to.

Nearly.

Clarke barks out an unexpected laugh and waves the offensive drawing a little harder. “This. Right here. This thing I drew.”

“My eyesight is quite fine, Clarke,” she returns, though the secondary implication only occurs to her the split second after it’s left her mouth. If there’s one thing Lexa prefers to avoid, it’s drawing attention to Clarke’s lost abilities.

As always, Clarke cares far less for decorum than Lexa does. She grins and points at the mangled shape on the center of the parchment. “Okay, art critic. What do you even think this is a drawing of?”

Lexa makes some unattractive, stuttering sound of hesitation, trying desperately to line the abstract shapes and shaky lines up into a mental image of _anything_ resembling an actual, corporeal object. Her mind is horrifyingly blank and the drawing is horrifyingly bad. Clarke is horrifyingly patient. And horrifyingly devoid of hints.

“It’s…well, obviously it’s, you know – it’s…exactly what you wanted it to be?” Lexa finishes hopefully. Lexa is sure Heda has not put together a sentence that was less of a sentence in some two hundred years. Heda’s legend lives and dies by the embarrassment Lexa inflicts upon it in the presence of Clarke Griffin. Far be it from Lexa to make light of such tragedy, but sometimes she wonders if it wouldn’t have been better if she had been the one shot in the head instead. But those are humorous thoughts made far too dark. Lexa was never very funny.

Clarke gives her an incredulous look. “Exactly what I want it to be?”

“Yes?”

Even slower, Clarke repeats the offending phrase. “Exactly what I want it to be?”

Lexa gestures helplessly. “Is any of what I’m saying working?”

“No,” Clarke confirms passively, holding the drawing as far from her body as possible, her good eye narrowing to try and bring it into focus. “No, it’s not.” When Lexa makes no further offer of criticism, Clarke glares at her. “Tell me what you think it is.”

Lexa decides her life is already over, resting peacefully in the same grave as her recently deceased dignity, and goes with the first thing that pops into her head. “A horse.”

Of course.

A horse, of course.

And if you’re going to crucify yourself, you might as well do it with confidence. Lexa tags on an “obviously,” for good measure.

After a moment, Clarke nods earnestly. “Wow. Uh, yeah, that’s what it is.”

“Really?”

“No not really. I’m trying to draw a map,” Clarke grumbles, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the pile at the foot of her bed. “If this was meant to be a horse, it’s one that has been run over by a car.”

“What in the name of the old gods is a car?” Lexa winces around the word as it falls clumsily from her lips.

Clarke barely looks up at her as she continues scribbling over her disastrous drawing. She spares Lexa a mumbled response that sounds awfully like,“I think we both can appreciate that I’m telling the truth when I say I have no idea.”

Lexa feels her ears burning at their tips, red with shame and…no, it’s mostly shame. “That was my second guess,” she insists quietly. And, perhaps it would have been. Lexa can see it when she imagines the drawing now. It had been, well, almost map-like. “I was going to guess it was a map. You’re getting better. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Clarke dismisses, already working on another drawing. Her tongue pokes out from between her teeth while she makes hesitant markings, a deep furrow between her nearly sightless eyes.

The words tumble out of her mouth before Lexa had even realized she harbored such convictions. “It _is_ my fault.” When she earns a baffled look from Clarke, she casts her eyes down at one of the correspondences on her desk. “It’s my fault.”

“Did you…?” Clarke trails off, running a hand over her wounded skull and glancing around in confusion. “Well, you didn’t – you didn’t do this – this thing to me.”

It occurs to Lexa that Clarke cannot remember what exactly had happened to her in the moment. She usually remembers that much, but occasionally it flits out of her mind’s reach. “I could have done more. I could have kept Polis more secure. Passive blame is as much a condemnation as active blame.”

“No it’s not,” Clarke mutters, rolling her eyes. “That’s horse shit. No, worse: that’s philosophy. You know what I say to that? Bah, humbug.”

Unexpectedly, it makes Lexa let out a huff of laughter. “I’m serious, Clarke.”

“God I know. You literally always are,” Clarke teases. Lexa doubts Clarke even knows why she says it – Clarke has not remembered Lexa’s name once today. But it’s said with such conviction that she cannot help but wonder if _some_ part of Clarke will always know her. “I’m serious too. A world where a plot is just as bad as neglect is one without consequence at all. Everything’s evil, so nothing is. Stop being so dramatic.”

It was sound advice. Heda could, perhaps, do to be a little less dramatic.

Clarke sighed loudly and rolled her head to give Lexa a baleful look. “Now look: you’ve made me philosophize.” She pointed her charcoal at the smile tugging at the corner of Lexa’s mouth. “I’ve changed my mind. I _do_ want that apology now.”

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i ever proofread my stories, i'll eat my hat. and i'll eat your hat too. no headwear will be safe.
> 
> someone on tumblr asked me to reprise music recommendations like i did in my last fic. like we're friends or something. i mean, im a musical tumbleweed, but if you're interested in my garbage music u can try try [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOWXfJIEYk) or [that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_4ntFv7EJM). look at us making friends.
> 
> gay.


	3. the second of the three spirits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> forgot i was responsible for this story for a hot second. sorry.
> 
> anyone want a tequila sunrise im literally making them right now.

 

+++

 

_She’s sitting at a massive, ancient banquet table – just near the end, removed from the jovial, loud conversation ebbing and flowing across the length of the table as warriors hail each other and demand more drink – nursing a drink she has not touched in one hand and twirling the ring on her third finger absently with the other. Clarke had long since gone off to aid Raven in…something. Lexa understands little of anything out of Raven’s mouth if she is being truthful. Although, Clarke has assured her that even Skaikru do not speak her tongue on most days._

_Between ceremonial duties, Lexa has no idea what to do with herself. She forces herself to take a small sip of her drink just to seem like she’s enjoying the festivities. The vendors would throw themselves off of her tower if they suspected she was anything less than thrilled with the provisions. It is not their fault Heda is allergic to fun._

_“-but Wanheda would. She is flesh and blood after all, no?”_

_Lexa’s ears perk up at the mention and she stares into her mug with carefully constructed disinterest while her ears tune into the conversation a few seats down._

_“I would not be so sure,” another man laughs, slamming his tankard down in summons for a refill. A steward attends him in record time and his beard is buried in the thick draft in seconds._

_“Oh, what do you know. My finest knife on the wager I can bed Wanheda by the end of the night!” He boasts to the gratuitous laughter of many._

_Lexa shoots him a dirty look, tipping back the entirety of her previously ignored drink. It’s just drunken boasting, but…well, understandably upsetting. Clarke is no faithless lover, yet it digs at a small part of her, right in the space between her ribs. Clarke is_ hers _. The discretion of their bonding is tactical and sound and well-advised, but –_

_Still._

_Without a summons, a steward whisks her tankard away and replaces it with a fresh one, brimming with the finest Polis has to offer. Before Lexa can turn to give the boy gold, he has already bustled off without payment._

_Heckled by doubters, the boastful brute pushes halfway to his knees with a broad sweep of his arms, upending his neighbor’s mead. “What little faith!” He scoffs. “I will have her on her knees faster than The Mountain fell beneath hers!”_

_His crude joke is drowned in a fresh wave of laughter and Lexa downs the entirety of her second drink before turning fully to the group at the table. The recognition spreads among them slowly, fading the laughter into respectful murmurs until they have all become aware of Heda’s presence and turned back to their plates and tankards with nervous acknowledgment._

_Lexa offers them a deadly smile. “You believe yourself greater than the mountain?” She intones, voice light._

_The man shrugs sheepishly. “No, Heda.” After a moment of contemplation, he turns to his comrades and adds, “but above and below the belt, I believe myself as big.”_

_Before they can stifle it, a series of choked guffaws fly past the mouths of several of his comrades. Lexa nods thoughtfully, twirling the ring on her third finger at a deadly speed. “Interesting,” she says with a contrived thoughtfulness. When they all turn to catch her words, she throws in a casual shrug. “It’s just – well, I’ve heard different from my stewards.”_

_The man stiffens in his seat, fingers curling tightly around his tankard while his comrades lean closer with interest._

_Lexa gazes down into the dregs of her drink and cocks her head to the side in recollection. “Yes, that’s not what I heard from Mira or Dina or Cecily or Grenda or June. Oh and Yule and-“_

_The rest of her list is drowned completely by the roar of laughter from the man’s comrades and the neighboring tables eavesdropping on their conversation. The man is trying to shout over them, gesturing angrily and blustering about liars and gossips and other unsavory names for women._

_By the time it has quieted enough for her to get another word in, a steward has gleefully replaced her empty tankard and set another in front of her. Lexa is already halfway through it when the man flings some accusation towards her that she does not pay attention to. He is inebriated. Lexa is on her way as well._

_“I would have her on her knees!” He insists, failing to appeal to the atmosphere of his neighbors. “I would have Wanheda, she would not resist me. Nobody can best me at swordplay!”_

_Lexa drains her drink and stands with an air of finality. The rest of the table falls silent while the man glowers and fumes in her general direction. She takes a slow departure in his direction. At the last moment, Lexa leans down with a hand draped lightly on the man’s shoulder. “Actually,” she says just loud enough for the eager eavesdroppers to hear, “nobody can best_ me _at swordplay.” The table tenses up and Lexa leans closer to his burning ears. “And Wanheda prefers to be on her back.”_

_Lexa departs accompanied by the most satisfying roar of laughter, tankards being smashed into the splintering table as the man angrily swipes his plate to the ground and storms off._

 

+++

 

Clarke very quickly learns how to get out of bed, though she seems to decide that the fact that she doesn’t know how to get _back in_ bed shouldn’t dissuade her from venturing forth unsupervised. Lexa is used to Clarke’s tendency toward dead-end solutions but it doesn’t make it any less worrisome. She will be safely tucked in bed, fast asleep and secure in the corridor Lexa had hidden her in – a small three-room, hallway consisting only of Clarke’s refurbished bedroom, the old cartography lab, and a long –abandoned observatory that has taken up recent occupation as a storage room for all things useless or broken – but go missing some hours later, only to turn up happily lost or asleep in an armchair somewhere.

These occurrences are not wholly detrimental to Clarke’s wellbeing. Being an invalid can’t be a balm on an already fragile mind, so mobility is a good sign. But when Clarke begins venturing further, ending up _outside_ the tower, or sleeping in corners that Lexa’s frantic searching does not uncover, she had to protest. This was exactly why Hedas were always dropping dead from stress. And if Clarke was going to drive her to an early grave (as it seemed increasingly likely), Lexa rather wished she would get on with already. The process was killing her twice.

“Heda.”

Lexa is certain she does not sleep anymore – she merely shuts her eyes in a poor performance of the role, waiting for the next advisor or guard to call her away from the farce. She sighs and pushes herself up in bed. It’s not the same anyways. The bed has grown too big to go back to one occupant and Clarke’s two floors away now.

“Speak,” she commands roughly, drawing a hand down her face.

The guard has a quiet concern about him and Lexa can tell from his face that she does not have to fear that the clans have all burned themselves down during her two hour play at sleeping.

He approaches her bed and stoops in a slight bow. “Wanheda is missing again, Heda. I would not disturb you if you hadn’t requested it. If you wish to sleep, though, we can find her-“

“No,” Lexa cuts him off quickly, swinging her legs out of bed to pull her boots on. She hadn’t bothered discarding her trousers before climbing under the blankets. It’s usually for good reason. “No, I will find her. Thank you for waking me.”

The guard bows again. “Heda,” he murmurs, excusing himself.

Lexa doesn’t even hazard a glance in a mirror before pulling her longcoat on and hopping on one foot while she stuffs her foot into her other boot. Her room is dark – the pitch of a cloudless night draping the tower in a gentle calm that had once been her favorite time of day. It had been a time for adventure in her youth. Even as duty pushed a solemn mantle on her shoulders, the night was still hers. Then it was Costia’s briefly. That had faded back into a time of reflection and solitude.

And then it was theirs.

And now it is no one’s.

The dark is lonely now, Lexa thinks. The moon seems less bright and Lexa wonders if perhaps the spirit she always thought shone the brightest with pride was perhaps just doomed to a life alone by virtue of being the only of its kind. The stars are said to be of the same spirits. But it is said the stars are at an unconquerable distance from the moon – twinkling at them from just close enough to make themselves known, but too far for a closeness of any meaning. The stars are teasing little bastards that way. The spirit of the moon was one reflected upon often in days of science and peace, but little is certain in their lore now. It’s a game for poets and wisemen of whom few have survived to Lexa’s ascension. It is an art – nay, a science long lost – as distant and hazy as the stars themselves. The kind of gentle hearts that would concern themselves with such wistful philosophizing have not survived to Lexa’s rule. Could not survive _under_ it perhaps.

She also became an old fool in her later years, Lexa supposes. A bad poet and an old fool.

An old fool who can’t find her young fool.

As unpredictable as Clarke can be of late, she has always tended towards the same handful of locations in her mindless wandering. On intuition alone, Lexa leaves the tower, circling around the less traveled southern wall where a grove of old trees survived the construction and expansion of the capitol. They were simply too big, too regal to be brought down. Or so Titus said when she was knee-high and interested, primarily, in climbing trees. Climbing trees and being short. (Or so she assumes when Titus accuses her of having been a child at some point. It always seems like a bit of a tall tale.)

(Heda. A child.)

(Absurd.)

It’s while walking under one of those trees that a small object drops painfully on her head, eliciting an undignified squawk from the Commander of Blood. Rubbing the top of her royal head, Lexa glares up to find her wayward fool smothering a laugh behind her fingers.

Clarke has managed to climb a tree.

Which would be odd without even considering that Clarke couldn’t climb trees _before_ her injury.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Lexa accuses, still rubbing at her smarting scalp. “Have you no idea how late it is?”

“I’d call it early,” Clarke counters.

Lexa crosses her arms. “And I’d call this parsing words.”

“You seem annoyed,” Clarke observes, as though she honestly cannot connect Lexa’s mission objective with her own actions. She probably can’t.

Lexa feels caught in a rare mood of frank conspiracy and the night makes her miss Clarke terribly, so she indulges in some long-awaited honesty. “Yes.”

“Do tell,” Clarke practically sings, leaning forward on the branch she’s perched on. She looks like a canary up there. A canary who can’t be taught a tune, if memory serves right.

“My life is a frustrating one, I admit.”

Clarke laughs. “Yeah me too. What’s your deal?”

For once, the fact that Clarke does not remember her is almost funny. Not quite. But almost.

“My – er, someone very important to me does not remember me. She’s been…in an accident.”

Clarke nods along, vacant of understanding. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, she’s healing. But she doesn’t remember me and she _won’t stop escaping her room.”_

The comedy is inescapable when Clarke nods along, picking at the flaking bark on the tree. “I bet that’s frustrating.”

Lexa actually laughs at that. “Yes, Clarke. Yes it is.”

“Buy her a leash!” Clarke declares, determined to improve a stranger’s mood, offering a cheeky grin while she swings down from her low branch to join Lexa on solid ground.

Heda of the 13 Clans rolls her eyes under cover of darkness. “You should not tempt me.”

When Clarke hits the ground, she winces and grasps at her ribs. Even so many moons later, they’re still tender. The fact that she managed to get _into_ the tree is as concerning as it is amusing. She still tires quickly though, and Lexa can read the exhaustion this questionable adventure has caused her. The cover of darkness makes it particularly difficult not to just reach out, pull Clarke close and quiet her confusion for a few moments of selfish indulgence. Even if only for a moment, Lexa wants to feel what they were once again.

“So you’re married then?”

Lexa starts, coming back to herself with something close to guilt. “What?”

Clarke shrugs. “You said she was dear to you. Is it your spouse? Your wife? Are you married?”

The absurdity of the situation is wandering from comedic into existentially devastating, but it’s dragging comedy along behind it kicking and screaming. Altogether strange.

Wife.

It is a dated term, dear to the Skaikru and had once been dear to Clarke as well, but it still manages to send Lexa’s heart tripping and an unsolicited truth tumbling out of her mouth.

“Yes.”

Clarke nods happily and holds up her own hand, the moonlight glinting subtly off the modest band on her finger. “Me too.”

Lexa just can’t help herself when she asks, “To whom?”

Leaning in as though sharing a secret, Clarke smiles and wiggles her hand. “I have no idea.”

The bark of laughter that escapes her is so unexpected and so unpracticed, that Lexa immediately claps a hand over her mouth, eyes darting around to make sure there were no gossiping mouths skulking about. The last thing Polis needed was a pervasive rumor that their Commander experienced joy – that their Commander had allowed a sense of humor to compromise her chronically boring disposition. Imagine the upset.

Of all things, Clarke seems charmed by the sound, reaching out to give Lexa’s shoulder a fond nudge. “It’s alright, don’t be embarrassed. Laughter’s the best medicine.”

“Is that so?” Lexa grumbles.

“Oh yeah. I got shot in the head and I laughed it right off.”

_“Clarke,”_ Lexa chides forcefully. In her agitation, she goes to run her hand across her forehead so hard it must look like her hand decided, independent of any review board, to punch herself right in the face. It kind of feels that way anyhow.

Clarke, as always, finds this incredibly amusing.

“Well,” Lexa mutters, rubbing at the sore spot on her forehead, “at least you remember.”

“It’s probably because I laugh so much.” Clarke leans back against the rough bark of the oak she had magically ended up in. Lexa decides she’s not willing to accept that Clarke found a way to climb it. There were stranger powers at work here. “So cheer up or you’ll never feel better.”

Lexa huffs quietly and casts her eyes off to some point in the dirt. “I feel fine.”

“Tell your face that,” Clarke scoffs. And isn’t that a trick. Who else was allowed to _scoff_ at Heda. Well, Clarke wasn’t _allowed_ to do things per se. She had always just kind of done them anyways.

Lexa isn’t exactly sure how to respond to the accusation. Certainly, she is not happy. Selfishly, ridiculously, childishly, Lexa is not happy. Gods, she should be bent eternally in prayer and praise to whatever fates gave Clarke back to her. But then, maybe that is the thing of it. The fates did not give Clarke back to _her_. Clarke was merely…given back. Heda should be above such things, but Lexa has never enjoyed things being taken from her. Who has, really.

Lexa is not happy. And certainly her face is doing something strange because of it. It has a habit of doing that.

“I can’t help it,” Lexa decides to say. It is true, if not particularly dignified.

Clarke pushes off the tree just far enough to grab a few of Lexa’s fingers in a loose hold and earn her attention. “Why not?” She asks innocently.

“Because I miss you.”

The words are quiet – a barely there and even less planned exhalation that would get lost to the gentle summer breeze if not for the weeks of distress and gravity Lexa had draped on its shoulders. The words, instead of drifting off on the breeze, lost under the chirping of crickets and whispering of full leaves, sink heavy to the ground between them like a lamely tossed stone. It barely kicks up dust.

But speaking them, truthfully for the first time since the attack, pulls the weight out of Lexa’s throat and leaves her feeling frail and exhausted. But better. Perhaps better, she is unsure yet.

Clarke cocks her head to the side, smile lopsided in her benevolent confusion, and squeezes Lexa’s hand a little harder. “I’m right here, though.”

“Sometimes,” Lexa corrects with a sad smile.

Clarke shakes her head, insistent. “All the time. No matter what it feels like to everyone – no matter what it looks like – I still have to…I still have to _feel_ all of this. I never _stop_ feeling. And when people look at me like I’m not – like I’m not on their favorite _setting_ or something-“ Clarke frowns, looking down at the same spot of dirt that Lexa has been pretending to be interested in. “I’m sorry I’m not the way you all want me to be, but I never get to stop being this person. I feel all of it even when I’m not the person you want. I may not remember what a tree is called or what my friends’ names are, but I remember feelings. I remember hurt.”

And Lexa, for the first time, thinks that she has been cruel.

How many times has she spent time in Clarke’s company merely biding for the next, hopefully better hiccup in awareness – hoping for a better Clarke over lunch than she had been over breakfast. How many times had Clarke been forced to accept that who she remembered being on a particular day was not the one anybody wanted. How many Clarkes had lived and died in a day while Lexa held her hand with sad eyes and an air of labor and servitude. How many times did Clarke want to forget just to start anew and be the _right_ Clarke over their next meal.

“Oh, don’t cry,” Clarke frets, hands wringing and unsure before she reaches out to wipe a few tears from the edge of Lexa’s jaw. “I didn’t – oh dear.”

Lexa catches Clarke’s hand before it can retreat and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “I’m sorry, Clarke. I should have realized,” she admits with a poor attempt at a smile. “I wish I was better at this, but I forget to remind myself that I require a lot of work still. I am still learning.”

“Get shot in the head, it makes you really smart.”

This time, Lexa just laughs, though it’s watery and forces her to clear her throat a few times. “Apparently.”

The moon manages to clear the handful of clouds grappling with it for space and a soft light casts strange and beautiful shadows across the ancient grove. They cast Clarke’s face in an unusual light, but it’s bold and makes Lexa feel something yearning and peaceful.

And she does miss her. Even if it is Lexa’s fault that she misses someone right in front of her, she misses her.

Clarke lets out a surprised huff of air when Lexa pulls her forward into a heavy embrace, weighed down by moonlight, strange and beautiful shadows, and the exhaustion of the day. It is much too late to be awake. Or much too early.

Lexa keeps her close with one arm and uses the other to stroke along the topmost ridges of Clarke’s spine and up to the base of her neck. She presses her nose into the hair at Clarke’s temple and gods she still smells the same. She still feels the same.

Lexa misses her just a little less.

 

+++

 

_Lexa leaves behind the howling tables of warriors and strides with purpose straight for where Clarke is leaning against a table. She’s waiting for Raven to finish arguing with a blacksmith, drumming her fingers against the cratered wood of one of the barkeeps counters. She has a tired smile on her face and is spinning the ring on her third finger absently. A few people are milling about, but Lexa does not care._

_Clarke sees her only a few strides away and her mouth is pulling up into a delighted smile. Lexa only sees it for a moment before she’s crowding Clarke back against the counter with the force of kissing her. She’s gone in too forcefully and Clarke bumps back into the counter and scrambles for a grip on the armor she’s not used to tracing that adorns Lexa’s chest. It’s not her usual leathers and it’s not her usual jacket, but Clarke manages to catch hold of it after a frantic moment. None of this dissuades Lexa from holding Clarke closer and kissing her deeper._

_It’s probably the drink._

_Her brain catches up to her desires much too slowly. When it does, she pulls away reluctantly and presses her nose into Clarke’s cheek, smiling like a stupid child but unable to banish the idiotic expression from her face._

_This is exactly why Heda does not drink._

_(This is exactly why Lexa ignores what Heda should or should not do.)_

_It takes Clarke a moment to catch her breath, but when she does it’s expelled in a breathless laugh that turns into a sigh. “What –“ she clears her throat, “what was that for?” She turns her head and Lexa’s face falls into the girl’s neck instead. It’s just as nice._

_“Because I love you.”_

_Clarke probably rolls her eyes, but Lexa can’t see from her current position. “Yeah, I know that.”_

_Lexa hums and presses closer. “Then why are you asking me?”_

_“Okay, smartass.” Lexa grins into her neck. That is one of her favorite ludicrous Skaikru insults. How on earth can an ass be smart. “I just meant that there’s people staring. I think the gentleman at the blacksmith stand just won a wager. He looks very happy.”_

_“I don’t care,” Lexa says honestly._

 

+++

 

The drawing, amazingly – nay, miraculously – gets better. It makes a lot more sense to Lexa when she realizes Clarke has been trying to draw maps the entire time. Clarke had certainly admired some of the more artful, ceremonial maps at the commander’s disposal, spread across intricately carved tables from generals long passed. In fact, they admired them frequently. All over them. The brushed strokes of the Sand people’s plateau border had never looked so good than with Clarke’s bare back pressed up against it and Lexa’s tongue-

Hm.

Maps. Right.

Clarke admired maps, but she had never expressed any desire to make them. Cartography was a noble art to be sure, but not one that Lexa had ever associated with someone under the age of eighty-seven. Their last cartographer, Boone, had been a long-retired warrior with two permanently broken knees and an unconquerable smell of parchment rot and old beans. It wasn’t until the ancient man had started gifting Lexa with dead birds on a semi-regular basis that she decided to gently force him into retirement. Nobody ever really lives long enough to figure out what happens when you surpass midlife by more than a decade or so. As it turned out, the human brain turned to rot and you smelled of beans. And then you’re forced into retirement for gifting the Commander of Blood dead canaries after mistaking them for important correspondence from the Meadow Clan – a clan that hasn’t even existed for thirty summers.

So that was one mystery solved.

Clarke neither smelled of old beans nor gifted Lexa with dead canaries. She was a little…forgetful, though. And for whatever reason, she had become absorbed by the dusty labyrinth of the old cartography lab. She sat in there with a pair of Boone’s ridiculous spectacles perched on her nose, fiddling with his finicky instruments and plotting careful grids across her rapidly improving artwork.

As tempting as it was for Lexa to just lock the door to the cartography lab and pretend Clarke had imagined the whole thing – which is horrible, because it would honestly probably work in Clarke’s current condition – Lexa cannot bring herself to deny this to her. But then, what can she deny her? She has made some retrospectively awful concessions just because Clarke was wearing questionably informal clothing to meetings.

(There, it’s out in the open. Heda of the 13 Clans has made important political concessions simply because of the cut of a certain shirt on a pretty girl. Lexa feels immensely better confiding that to a fictional narrative derivative of her already fictional life.)

Anyways.

Clarke likes maps now. It is complicated.

“How surprising to find you in here,” Lexa mutters, dropping a tray full of food next to the tray of food already being ignored on Clarke’s appropriated desk. Clarke hardly spares her a glance, fingers carefully fiddling with one of the hundreds of variations of measuring devices while she plots out the distance between the northern boundaries of Trikru forests into the outskirts of Azgeda territory. Her current project is little more than calculations and outlines and plotted points, but her hand is so much more sure than it had been only weeks before. It warms Lexa’s heart.

Lexa stands just behind Clarke for a stretch of silence that is just long enough to feel awkward, but not long enough to conquer Lexa’s need for Clarke to acknowledge her presence. Patience wins out in the end and Clarke eventually finishes her calculations, setting charcoals and dusty instruments aside with a startled blinking and shaking of her head that lets Lexa know just how little Clarke is capable of multitasking. Clarke takes in the untouched trays of food, the low angle of sunlight casting dust moats into something gleaming and deceptively magical, and finally, the shadow over her shoulder. She startles and Boone’s spectacles slip down her nose a bit.

“O-Oh,” Clarke breathes, placing one hand over her heart while the other taps the spectacles up higher on her nose. “I didn’t – what’s…” she struggles with her thoughts for a moment before trailing off, her mind taking a nice, recreational dive right out the window. Abby says distraction is a normal symptom.

“Clarke.”

She startles again, a little less obviously, and her eyes slide back to focus on Lexa’s again. “Yes?”

“Is everything going alright?”

Clarke raises an eyebrow and smiles. “Is what going alright?”

Lexa sighs. “The maps, Clarke. How are your maps?”

“Hungry.”

It’s Lexa’s turn to raise an eyebrow and she casts a worried look over Clarke’s shoulder. “Are they now?”

“What? No, I – uh, I meant that I’m hungry,” Clarke corrects with a frustrated shake of her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that out loud. Am I allowed to be in here?”

She asks it every time Lexa finds her in the cartography lab. It wouldn’t be humorous if not for the fact that Clarke had never cared _before_ whether she was allowed to be places. Wanheda decided what Wanheda was allowed to do before. Lexa is tempted, as always, just to tell her no if only to see what would happen. Clarke does not understand that particular word in the Gonasleng vernacular. Or in any vernacular.

“Yes,” she says despite herself. “You were working on maps.”

“Right, right, the maps. Well if you wouldn’t mind telling the kitchen staff to bring me one meal at a time throughout the day instead of three meals at the same time, at the end of the day, it would be greatly appreciated.”

Lexa shakes her head fondly and offers little resistance. “You simply can’t get good help around here.”

“Oh, I dunno. The help’s pretty cute,” she teases, casting a cheeky grin over her shoulder.

Lexa expects her to turn back and inhale the meals she had neglected all day, but she stays turned around, spectacles slipping down her nose again. She wrinkles her nose a bit to try and encourage them to stay put and –

Okay.

The spectacles are not horrible. The spectacles are doing good things to Clarke. Or Clarke is doing good things to the spectacles. Either way, Lexa is suddenly uncomfortably attracted to Boone’s old wardrobe, which will likely visit her in her nightmares for many nights to come.

“I like the spectacles,” Lexa blurts.

Because it was not enough for Heda to be uncomfortable in her own head. Heda had to share it with Clarke and everyone in the world at all times.

Clarke grins wider and allows them to slip lower so she can eye Lexa over the top of them. “Thanks,” she husks with a suggestive purr. “They help me see better.”

“How practical,” Lexa chokes, halfway between laughter and some bizarre form of arousal that feels a little too off to be fully considered arousal. But it’s definitely getting there, if not on a troubling and impractical path.

Clarke laughs, dropping her pretenses and pushing the spectacles up again. “Yeah, I’m sure you’re into that.”

“And how would you know? You don’t even remember my name,” Lexa pouts.

“I don’t have to. You ooze practicality. You have your shirt tucked in, General Dork.”

Lexa was not exactly sure what the nature of Clarke’s insults meant, but she delivered them so expertly that she was never in any doubt that she was meant to be offended. “Admit you don’t remember my name,” she returns stubbornly.

“It…begins with an ‘M’?”

Clarke’s eyes shine with a kind of determination that makes Lexa’s scoff of victory die in the back of her throat. She doesn’t suppose it matters in the long term.

“Close enough.”

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nice.
> 
> anyways. cheers for the support, as always.
> 
> for that one person who asked for music recommendations, im fully prepared to stop this train for you. [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6MnjpIgyTw) is pretty good, [this other one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRyzg2XUi94) ain't too bad either.
> 
> have a safe (but not too safe) saturday, tip your waiters, piss in your neighbor's pool, save for your retirement.
> 
> cheers.


	4. the last of the spirits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck sorry i had to finish my quiche.
> 
> it took me 9 days.
> 
> anyways.
> 
> CONTENT WARNING: head shot. graphic head shot.  
> If you don't want to read it, it's literally the first italicized section in this chapter. skip that until it goes back to present, non-italicized section. Starts back up at "Lexa watches Clarke work sometimes." You won't miss anything you don't already know. but like....i worked hard on it....

+++

 

_People Clarke had gifted her mercy to slip into the crowd with guns and plans and evil in their hearts because it’s easy – because Clarke turns down security details and the constriction of checkpoints and restricted access. She claims it is a party and wishes to show Skaikru and Grounder guests trust and goodwill. Clarke never seems to care whether or not the same is shown to her._

_They slip into the crowd like snakes in the grass and Lexa spins the ring on her third finger nervously as she watches Clarke gesturing wildly in the throws of a grand story some fifty paces away. She’s sure there is an audience, but she can’t see them. All she sees is the glint of metal on Clarke’s left hand and the strength she’s found to be happy in spite of all that would stand in her way. It’s mesmerizing and she almost laughs at the idea that Heda could ever be strong enough to be alone. She wonders if Titus actually believes the lessons he teaches or if he has long since accepted that his life’s purpose amounts to little more than an exercise in futility. It would certainly explain his disposition. And his lack of hair._

_But happy moments always feel like twine pulled too taught, strong but only in the tension gathered at the weakest point in the middle. It’s stiff. Steady. Pulled too hard, too thin._

_And-_

_-Then it snaps._

_The metaphor is a guttural, violent thing with the way the gun cracks in the crisp autumn air. And it’s sick and selfish, but Lexa’s first thought is that she wishes she had not been watching her when it happens. There truly are things you cannot be expected to recover from, Heda or not. And she does not have the luxury of falling apart. (But is something a luxury if you cannot stop it?)_

_Her second thought is that death is never in slow motion. She’s heard it described that way – a three second moment stretched over a year, a decade, a lifetime. It is not. Nor has it ever been in her experience. She is not sure if those who profess it to be are lying or just differently attuned to traumatic events, but they are wrong, wrong, wrong._

_Clarke’s head jerks to the side a fraction of a second before the crack of the gunshot has time to bounce off of the mountains to the east and reach their ears again. Miraculously, she does not hit the ground. An unlucky member of her audience has blood thrown in his face and a bone shard imbedded in his cheek, but he will not know that until much later when he realizes some of the blood is his. He’s gaping like a trout, making sick heaving noises like his lungs have collapsed, but Lexa knows they haven’t. She know because_ her _lungs are collapsing and she’s not making a sound._

_Later she will convince herself she knew immediately what happened, but in the moment it’s a lie. It’s a lie because Clarke stumbles to the side from the force of the blow, but keeps her feet under her and nobody is reacting because Lexa was right: nothing happens in slow motion and it’s too, too much and too, too sudden._

_Clarke’s still on her feet and it’s a grotesque thing to have to watch. Lexa doesn’t remember closing the distance between them, but she knows she stops short because Clarke’s holding the side of her head with one hand and her ear with the other and she’s repeating nonsensical words like she’s trying to learn a new language. Lexa can make out ‘loud’ and ‘stroke’, but the rest is garbled._

_People are screaming by the time Lexa grabs Clarke’s elbow. Her knees finally give out and she’s still talking while blood drips from her nose, from her ear, from the blonde tips of her hair where it runs down the side of her head. Lexa knows, gods she knows, that head wounds bleed a lot, but she swears it’s more than is biologically possible. She wonders if the blood of a loved one is somehow measured in a different metric than that of a stranger. It must be. It’s like comparing gold to iron. Every drop sliding down Clarke’s neck into the collar of her shirt feels like a fortune tossed out into oblivion – wasted and tragic and almost ironic enough to be morbidly funny._

_It’s the first time gore has made Lexa feel ill and suddenly she feels the cold sweat and facial numbness of an impending faint. It’s the first time she’s made ill by red and it’s bad because it’s everywhere, everywhere, everywhere._

_Lexa thinks she’s going to vomit._

_Clarke has been shot in the skull and it has not killed her._

_Clarke is still alive and_ talking _of all things, grabbing at the buckles across Lexa’s chest when she gives up trying to hold her own brains in. Lexa panics and suddenly she’s stricken by the sickening thought that all she wants is for Clarke to just_ die _because the alternative is somehow worse as she watches it unfold. It’s the worst thought she’s ever had. And she cannot staunch it._

_(Just_ die.)

_(It’s like livestock that’s been slaughtered improperly and it’s cruel, twisting her stomach in knots.)_

_Lexa heaves, but keeps it down only by the grace of years of training and desensitization._

_She doesn’t want Clarke to die. Gods, of course not._

_She doesn’t know what she wants._

_Clarke can’t talk anymore, but she’s still trying. Her words aren’t even words at this point and she keeps spluttering on the blood leaking from her nose. Lexa is torn between watching Clarke’s pupils bounce back and forth like rubber against a wall and listening to the garbled sounds of failing speech that Clarke is trying too hard to parse into words._

_Lexa still hasn’t said a word and she pries her mouth open to comfort Clarke while she panics but nothing comes out. She can’t find a single word to say. It’s not her fault – there’s nothing to be said. She’s useless and frozen and tipping over the edge of something that feels a lot like dying but worse._

_Words fail her, but Lexa finds the wherewithal to run two fingers down Clarke’ cheek, slow and final and not nearly final enough. Her pupils stop dancing for a brief handful of moments, desperate and hyper-focused on Lexa’s face. She murmurs something in her new, mangled language that sounds like something important._

_If only Lexa spoke it._

_If only Lexa could speak at all._

_Her savior comes, oddly enough, in the form of being shoved away. Heda has not been shoved in – well, maybe_ ever _. It does the trick. Abby has found the strength to snap orders and hold her daughter’s head as it bleeds in her lap while Lexa’s trying to remember her own name. There’s something vacant and terrifying in Abby’s eyes and she’s pointing violently between Nyko as he arrives in a stricken mess, and the guards hovering around. One of Clarke’s personal guards – one of the few she conceded to – drops to his knees in the soft earth and decaying leaves and presses his forehead to the ground in supplication for…something. Lexa is not sure what and she doubts he is either. Her priorities are in shambles and her brain is busy frantically searching for the guard’s name._

_Rook. His name is Rook._

_Clarke finally stops trying to talk and it’s equal parts terrifying and relieving. Her eyes are still open, though. They swing around wildly, manic and confused. Lexa wonders what she’s seeing. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be what everyone else is seeing._

_Then they settle on Lexa and she makes a choking noise like she wants to talk again. Thankfully, she doesn’t. It’s enough to jumpstart Lexa’s heart, though, and she reaches forward to pull sticky strands of stained hair from the side of Clarke’s face. There’s warm, clotting blood pooling in Lexa’s palms, but Clarke’s skin is cold like the damp earth soaking through the fabric of her pants into her shaking knees._

_“Clarke.”_

_Abby and Nyko are practically screaming at each other but their words are lost to the general uproar. Clarke blinks at her, shaking and desperate for something Lexa would die to know – die to provide._

_“Clarke,” she says again. There are words clawing at her seizing throat to escape: final pleas, declarations of love, something angry and blasphemous, a blessing to move on from this life. None of them can break through the name that keeps escaping her lips. It doesn’t matter, though, because Nyko has started administering last rites and Clarke twitches in a way that makes Lexa terrified that Clarke understands what is happening. Gods, don’t let her know what is going on._

_“Clarke. Clarke. Clarke.”_

_And on._

_Abby’s yelling at Nyko again and Lexa understands the contention now: Abby wants to drag Clarke back from the brink – she wants to fight. Nyko is pleading with Abby to let her die. It is a kindness, though, Lexa knows this. Nyko has nothing but respect and love for Clarke. This is not something people come back from in his experience – in anyone’s experience._

_Clarke is dying. Too fast and too slow._

_Somehow, it takes that long for it to sink in. When it does, Lexa hardens as much as she can manage. “Abby.”_

_Clarke makes some kind of choking noise and Abby lifts her daughter’s head a bit before regarding Lexa sharply. “Commander.”_

_“Can you saver her?”_

_Clarke is staring at the back of her guard’s head where he still kneels, mumbling Trigedasleng prayers into the rotting leaves. Somehow the conversation about her imminent death is not holding her attention anymore._

_Abby shakes her head and she is almost as lost as Heda. “I don’t know. But she’s still alive. Isn’t that enough?”_

_And it is._

+++

 

Lexa watches Clarke work sometimes. It matters little to Clarke when she’s deep into a project – she is unable to process more than the task at hand. Lexa might as well be a ghost to her.

She feels like a ghost to her most days.

But Clarke is beautiful in her focus, beautiful in her perseverance and survival and oddity – because that’s what she is to the residents and stewards of the tower: an oddity. She wanders around bumping into expensive heirlooms, walls and pillars with armfuls of parchment and Boone’s strange spectacles on her nose. She’s a ghost to Polis – more legendary to them now perhaps than Wanheda, Mountain Slayer.

Lexa thinks she is not so mysterious. A little sad, a little lost, a lot confused, but mostly just Clarke.

Just Clarke.

Lexa realizes that Clarke has stopped working and is staring blankly out one of the dusty old windows in the cartography lab. Lexa had tried moving her to another brighter, cleaner room, but Clarke refused. She liked the heavy silence of the old room. It comforted her.

Clarke’s mind wanders often, so Lexa just slouches in her chair – a rare indulgence – and props her head in one hand so she can watch Clarke more easily.

She’s beautiful.

Her hair has started to come in on the half of her skull that bears the scars of her attack. Lexa had evened it out for her one night when Clarke complained about it. The scar is a long, jagged thing stretching from her temple to down behind her ear, still pink and healing even so many moons later.

A warmth floods Lexa’s chest and she takes a moment to enjoy the fact that, whatever may have changed, Clarke is _alive._

A ground-heaving crack of explosion rattles Lexa’s teeth, snapping her ungracefully from her warm thoughts and sending her heart tripping in panic. It takes only a moment for her to place the sound, but the moment still _happened_ and she’s irritated. Raven has been granted permission to violate noise ordinances every half moon and turn of the cycle. Even blocks away from the tower, her technological indulgences are as loud as they are terrifying. Lexa frequently reconsiders the allowances she has granted her.

Her heart quiets quickly – Heda is used to such perils – and she shakes off the surprise with mild irritation. When she turns back to watch Clarke work, her heart trips again, smashing back into her ribs. The force of the noise and Lexa’s own protesting heart had drowned out the sound of Clarke falling backwards off of her stool. Lexa shoots out of her seat, but Clarke is already skittering backwards on her hands and bottom, eyes wild and spectacles dangling from one ear.

Lexa forces herself to slow down and crouch a distance away from the frightened girl. Loud noises occasionally sparked a fire under Clarke. Abby had a word for that too – Lexa has come to realize that Skaikru have words for everything – but Lexa often lets Abby’s rambling leave her memory as soon as it enters it.

“Clarke?”

“W-w-what was that?” Clarke stammered. “I’ve – I’ve been – oh my god, I’ve b-been-“ Clarke’s words stick like molasses in her brain, coming out in a panicked mess. One of her hands shoots up to palm at the side of her head. Her eyes are distant and unseeing.

Lexa scoots closer. “Clarke.” When she gets no acknowledgement, she ducks into Clarke’s line of sight. “Clarke,” she repeats, firmer. “Clarke, you’re okay.”

Clarke’s eyes finally lock onto Lexa’s own and she shakes her head frantically. “N-no, no, no, I”ve b-been shot. Lexa, I’ve been shot! I-I’m, oh my god,” she rambles, tearing her eyes away from Lexa’s again to consume her surroundings, confused and breathing heavily.

Well. That’s new.

Lexa is rendered silent for a terrifying moment, mouth open slightly and eyes wide. Clarke has not remembered her name once. “Clarke?” Clarke looks at her again, breaths coming out in ragged huffs. “Clarke, you’re alright. You’re here and you’re alright.”

She shakes her head obstinately and Lexa takes a few small steps forward in her hunched position. “Lexa,” Clarke repeats in a breathless exhale.

The word digs painfully between her ribs, but it is equal parts relieving. “Clarke.”

“Lexa, I’m, I – I, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “I’m – fuck.” Tears pool in her eyes, but she’s trying to blink them away in her frustration. “I can’t see you,” she huffs, scrubbing at her eyes. It won’t help.

Lexa closes the last few inches, sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of her. Clarke pushes forward until she’s mirroring Lexa’s position and reaches out tentatively for the lapel of Lexa’s jacket. She finds it after a moment, bunching the worn wool in her hand tightly while her eyes do their best to scan Lexa’s face.

“Are you alright?” Clarke asks.

And isn’t that a thing to ask? Lexa laughs and realizes she’s crying. Heda does neither of these things. And yet.

“I’m alright,” Lexa confirms. “Yes, I’m alright. Are you alright?”

Clarke seems taken back by the question, but shakes her head slowly after a moment. “No. No, I don’t think so. I’m – god, how am I still alive?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa answers truthfully.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“I don’t care.”

Clarke laughs at that, fingers still tracing the scar along her temple like she’s feeling it for the first time. They sit in silence for a moment before Clarke’s hand falls from her hairline. Slowly, her head tips forward until it falls heavily on Lexa’s shoulder. It’s a little awkward, but Lexa inches closer so it’s less uncomfortable for Clarke to lean over. Clarke’s hands settle lower on Lexa’s jacket, fisting in the fabric at her ribs.

“Was it scary?” Clarke murmurs. “I don’t remember it hardly.”

Heda is never afraid. And yet.

“Yes.” Lexa runs one hand carefully over the ridges of Clarke’s spine. It’s a delicate process – Lexa has barely so much as brushed hands with the girl in so long. But it feels like a gift.

After a beat, Clarke confides, “I remember some of it.”

“What do you remember?” Lexa asks automatically, ashamed by her curiosity but otherwise unable to staunch it.

“I remember watching Rook pray. I remember thinking that dying was strange and terrifyingly empty,” she says quietly. “I remember the nothingness. And I remember thinking that they’d all been wrong – those that believed – those that followed old world faith, let it lead them into danger and through hardship, god, they were wrong Lexa. Nobody’s watching us. Nobody cares. Death is not a homecoming and nothingness is not a reward.”

An unexpected chill snakes down the back of Lexa’s neck, settling in the pit of her stomach and cooling to glass. She pulls Clarke closer to ward off the chill and continues stroking up and down her spine. “That’s…”

“Sad?” Clarke supplies. “I know it sounds that way, but I didn’t feel sad.”

Lexa hums thoughtfully and turns her head to press her nose into Clarke’s hair. “Maybe that is not the word I was looking for.” She’s tried to picture dying – who hadn’t? Certainly, Heda was always mere footfalls from death on every journey, but she had never felt death itself wrap its cold hands around her throat, impatient and _present_ in a way she felt she could not escape. She has felt that she _could_ die, not yet that she _is_ dying. Not yet anyways.

“There’s no word for it,” Clarke confides. “If I was sad, it was not for myself. It was for everything else that would exist without me.”

She’s sure she should have something more intelligent to add to the confession, but, much like the feeling Clarke describes, there are no words. Clarke turns her head slightly and her cold nose touches the skin at Lexa’s neck. Her breath is warm, though, when she sighs irritably.

“I must be terribly inconvenient.”

“Yes, terribly.”

Clarke hums a drowsy laugh. “Have I done anything horrible?”

Lexa shrugs as minutely as possible to avoid dislodging Clarke from her shoulder. “Ah, well, you did push Titus off the tower balcony and start a war between Broadleaf and the entire nation of Azgeda, but nothing too serious.”

“Shut up,” Clarke grumbles around her audible smile. “I did not.”

“And how would you know? I think it’s not so unbelievable.”

(And truly, it isn’t.)

Clarke pushes back from her shoulder, but keeps close so her glassy eyes can pick up the blurry lines of Lexa’s face. “Easy: Titus can’t be killed. He’s like a statue, or a large book…or a cockroach.”

“And that is…?”

“Gross bug – can’t be killed,” Clarke yawns.

“Doesn’t that seem just the slightest bit hypocritical?”

Clarke takes a weak swing at Lexa’s side, connecting with barely enough pressure to bruise a summer fruit. Lexa hates herself for it, but she knows it is time to let Clarke rest. It is unlikely she will be whole and _hers_ in a few hours, but, as Lexa reminds herself by every degree of the sun, Clarke is still Clarke. She will have her either way.

“I told you I didn’t like festivals,” Lexa murmured, guiding Clarke to her feet and pulling her towards the door.

Clarke nods sleepily with a conspiratorial smile. “It’s the dancing isn’t it? You’re still mad about the dancing.”

“Actually, I thought the food was disappointing.”

When Lexa pulls a blanket up around Clarke’s chin and bids her goodnight, Clarke calls her Murphy and asks where her father is again. Lexa pretends to sleep in a chair beside Clarke’s bed that night.

 

+++

_Clarke dies at some point._

_More specifically, she stops breathing and her heart sputters to a stop. This was never something Lexa had to be specific about, but Skaikru have never seemed closer to the stars and the old gods than in their medical pursuits. Abby pushes into Clarke’s chest in ruthless, persistent pulses until Clarke’s ribs splinter and Nyko is pulling his hair out at Abby’s brazen disrespect for the dead._

_It works, though. Clarke comes back like an extinguished wick catching an opportunistic breeze. Lexa decides that she will never fully understand Skaikru, but she will always fear them._

_Abby keeps up a constant stream of technical jargon and theorizing and speculating and nobody is listening to her. Lexa just holds Clarke’s hand while the marrow in her bones_ aches _for the way Clarke’s breathing is labored – a constant calculated effort that takes all of the energy Clarke doesn’t have. Once in a while Lexa swears Clarke finds the wherewithal to give Lexa’s hand a faint squeeze and each one is like one of the compressions Abby had snapped Clarke’s ribs with, forcing Lexa’s heart to gallop back into rhythm. Lexa lives and dies in those moments. She doesn’t remember much between them, though._

_There are four of them in the room Clarke is dying in. Lexa’s vigil is accompanied only by Abby’s frantic medical babbling, Nyko’s helplessness, and Raven’s silence. It is unclear to her why Raven has been included in the battle for Clarke’s life. Maybe they wanted the comfort of someone with the bare qualities of being outrageously smart – never mind her irrelevant expertise. Maybe they wanted one of the hundred there. Maybe they just couldn’t figure out how to tell Raven to leave. It matters little. She says nothing and does nothing except stare holes in Clarke’s face like she’s an equation just beyond Raven’s comprehension. It’s a desperate kind of calculation taking place behind her dark eyes and Lexa’s glad she at least has the sense to accept she is useless. It quietly eats Raven alive._

_The rest of the Skaikru wait outside, deathly silent for once._

_Clarke’s never seemed further away and Lexa’s torn between reeling her back over miles of pain versus just cutting the tether so she can go on. She looks her age for once – nearly a child – and there can’t be enough blood in her veins for how much is soaked into the mud of the fair grounds, splattered on the blacksmith’s face, and soaked into everyone’s clothes. She looks gone already. Ethereal._

_Nobody’s paying her any mind, as absorbed as they are, and Lexa presses her lips against Clarke’s knuckles. “Go if you must,” she murmurs against cold skin. “You know better than us.”_

_After all, dying is an easy thing._

+++

 

It takes only one annoying coincidence for the Nightbloods to discover that they enjoy Clarke’s new…lifestyle. Or whatever you call the unavoidable changes in disposition and abilities that grave head wounds gift you with.

Lexa will never be fully capable of being anything less than fond of them, but they are like…oh, what was the creature Clarke described?

Cockroaches.

Clarke would appreciate the comparison. And then she would make the same jest she always makes, which is something about the irony of cockroaches being one of the few insects not to survive nuclear war.

Clarke does so love her own jesting. Lexa’s ability, or lack thereof, to understand Clarke’s jesting does little to dampen her spirit.

But yes. The Nightbloods are like cockroaches except less extinct.

(Unfortunately.)

Clarke, as usual, gets lost somewhere between her room and the dining hall. Lexa would have brought her every meal for the rest of her life if it meant sheltering her from the stares and scrutiny of the entire tower. But nearly everyone else believed Clarke needed the normalcy of eating her meals like a normal person. Including Clarke.

Heda was outnumbered.

But on one such occasion, Clarke had ended up wandering into the Nightblood’s study – a small library with a collection of desks and warm light that they spent time pretending to study in. Lexa remembers vaguely what it was like before her conclave, but she prefers not to dwell on those memories.

Lexa finds them some time after Clarke has missed her meal and failed to return to her own wing of the tower, gathered around Clarke while she draws offensive caricatures of the less favored residents of the tower. The Nightbloods are _laughing_ of all things. (Lexa is sure she never laughed as a Nightblood. Although, perhaps Clarke is just universally skilled in drawing laughter out of those who share the bloodline.)

Lexa’s mortified to learn that every time Clarke shows them a crude drawing, they demand a story behind it.

Which Clarke promptly makes up.

Because she can’t remember.

And the Nightbloods encourage it.

The whole scene is wildly inappropriate. But –

Well, Clarke is laughing and the Nightbloods are hanging not just off of her every word, but off of her shoulders and knees and arms while she gesticulates and invents wild stories. Clarke’s spectacles are falling off of Ava’s small face, eyes magnified to ridiculous proportions. Occasionally, Clarke’s blind gesturing forces one of the Nightbloods to duck lest they have their heads taken off. But, like everything else about Clarke, it only sends them into fits of giggles.

(Lexa is _certain_ she never _giggled_ as a Nightblood.)

“Yeah, I don’t know who that one is, but he looks like a Dennis,” Clarke says thoughtfully, holding out a rather unflattering sketch that looks suspiciously like Titus.

This earns the loudest round of laughter yet. Lexa smothers her own grin and clears her throat.

The Nightbloods sober instantly, splitting into comical extremes where half of them scramble away from Clarke and the other half cling even closer. Ava’s thrown her arms around Clarke’s neck while Aden has stumbled forward into some strange, awkward bow with his hands placed over his knees.

“I see studying is as productive as always,” Lexa sighs, brushing her fingers over one of the faded diagrams used to teach warfare strategy to any Nightblood who bothered to pay attention long enough. “Clarke,” she adds in acknowledgement.

Clarke pretends to look around for whomever Lexa may be referring to. Ava giggles and whispers in Clarke’s ear, “that’s you!”

Clarke’s eyes widen comically and she gasps with all the theatrics of one willing to die for their sense of irony. Surely Clarke had avoided her own demise on the fairgrounds just because her death wasn’t _ironic_ enough.

“Oh, that’s me!” Clarke adds and Lexa forcefully suppresses the instinct to cast her eyes towards the ceiling.

“You missed dinner.”

Clarke shrugs. “I’d say dinner missed me.”

“I’d say you are going to be spectacularly hungry in three hours and you’ll wish you had more than smart remarks to fill your stomach,” Lexa grumbles, eyes snapping between the Nightbloods, daring one of them to laugh.

Clarke nods apologetically and hoists Bella more firmly into her lap. “I’d say you’re probably right.”

“Come then, I’ll take you to the kitchens. Grenda will fix you something I’m sure.” Holding out her hand, Lexa beckons Clarke to pull herself loose from the pile of children and join her. It doesn’t take much coaxing, but it does take some time and prying on Clarke’s part.

“Don’t leave, Wanheda,” Ava pouts when Clarke removes her arms from around her neck. “It’s boring without you.” The name earns a confused grimace from Clarke, but she says nothing of it.

“Heda is never bored,” Lexa chides, boring of her own lessons even as the words leave her mouth. “Well, Heda is rarely bored. Consider this good practice.”

“I’m sure I’ll be back soon,” Clarke reassures them. “If there’s one thing you can count on about me, it’s that I’ll get lost long before you can remember to miss me. Or long before I can remember much of anything.”

“You won’t forget us will you?” Bella asks, consternation drawing her eyebrows together into a cute pout. Lexa makes a mental note to find ways to make her successors less endearing. Heda cannot be cute.

Clarke scoffs. “Forget you? Of course I won’t. I’ll never forget you, Bingo.”

Bella giggles. Again. “It’s Bella.”

“Of course it is, Brindle.”

 

+++

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cool.
> 
> i'll be honest: when i said i had 5 chapters of content, i never like....wrote an ending? idk i don't pretend to know what past indigo was thinking. probably very little if present indigo is anything to base her on.
> 
> all of this is to say that imma need 2 weeks to either make the last chapter longer or write one more chapter. only time will tell. you can stop reading this author's note. nothing important happens from this point on.
> 
> okay now that all the glue eaters are gone, here's some music. past the second paragraph of an author's note, we huff our glue like civilized assholes. [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm4zhIhVNBY) is a pretty good song as well as [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ1SM6H2fsw). that guys a phenomenal front man in any band.
> 
> cheers.


	5. the end of it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u know sometimes less is more. this will be the last chapter, we'll keep it short and sweet.
> 
> enjoy kiddos.

+++

 

 

_They spend days waiting for Clarke to pass. It always feels just around the corner. One can only remain tense and vigilant for so long, though, and they relax eventually. They ease into grief like it’s routine and the ache is so constant it doesn’t ache anymore. Or if it does, they don’t have anything to compare it to so they forget._

_The boy, Murphy, makes a joke about Clarke staying alive just to yell at him for neglecting to translate one of the history tomes Clarke had asked him to help her with. He claims he is solely responsible for Clarke’s continued survival by the fiber of his own irresponsibility. Raven laughs, but it turns into sobs at some point and Octavia breaks Murphy’s nose without seeming to know why. She is apologizing profusely mere seconds later and Raven’s sobs are laughs again. Murphy is even more creative in his swearing than Clarke, and Lexa considers that a feat._

_Lexa will never understand Skaikru, but perhaps she does not have to fear them._

_Whatever the reason, stubbornness, strength of spirit, or pure spite, Clarke does not pass and Abby tentatively shifts her constant chatter from short-term survival to long-term consequences. The woman never shuts her mouth._

+++

 

Lexa can appreciate the nobility of a transparent government – a sovereign with clean hands and an honest heart laid before their people, all their sins laid bare and their intentions worn like a badge upon the breastplate of governance.

This is not what Lexa is, but the image is a nice one.

The scouts are an elite group, silent and deadly since near birth and removed from society in a way that even Lexa cannot empathize with. They govern themselves for the most part – even Lexa sees them so rarely that they’re legend in her own mind. As a Nightblood she had entertained the idea of running away to be a Scout, back when beating the warriors and trainers of Polis into the dirt with wooden swords meant more to her than civic responsibilities or the heavy mantel of Heda. She changed her mind eventually but it was only because even Heda did not have the upbringing or skills to join them.

Lexa is having a day that is somehow more stressful and debilitating than a typical day for her, but it somehow manages to get worse. A guard comes to her, huffing and heaving from the long run from the southern markets (he explains between gasps and grunts). Lexa really does not care.

And then he tells her that Clarke has been apprehended for theft and Lexa cares again.

“She – Clarke – Wanheda,” Lexa stutters uncharacteristically. At the guard’s bewildered expression, she forces herself to pull together and regard him with something closer to authority. “Wanheda has been…apprehended?”

“Heda, she stole goods from a merchant and assaulted a guard,” he appeals nervously, fist pressed in respect over his heart. “We have her detained at the southern guard post, but she’s…”

“She’s what?” Lexa snapped.

He shrugged helplessly. “She’s being rather difficult.”

Yes, that sounded like Clarke.

“I can’t – I have an assembly with the committee-“ Lexa cuts herself off at the guard’s perturbed expression.

He does not care. Nor is he allowed to have an opinion on her problems.

Absurdly, before Lexa can figure her life out or at least cobble it into something resembling grace and authroity, a cloaked figure slips in through the window, sweeping in like a shadow and regarding her out of breath guard with wary appraisal. It takes Lexa a moment to realize the woman came in through a window some twenty stories off the ground.

“Heda,” the woman murmurs, gliding across the room to stand at her side. The woman’s eyes flit over the guard again and Lexa can sense her discomfort. She wonders when the last time this scout had seen another human being besides her fellow scouts or her commander. Actually, Lexa’s not entirely sure she’s even met this scout before.

Lexa tries to dismiss the guard with a flick of her wrist, but his hands twist into the handle of his sword and he shifts uncomfortably, torn between an unknown compulsion and obeying his Heda. Lexa’s temper is already short and the sun hasn’t yet reached zenith so she shoots him a look that has sent lesser men fleeing. It only angers her further that this time it doesn’t.

“Is there anything else?” She hisses, increasing the ferocity of her glare. It’s not working, but Lexa has little else to compel him with except the sword at her belt.

The guard is doing an admirable, if not annoying, job of weather the abuse of Lexa’s fury. “Heda, what do I do about Wanheda? The merchant wishes to seek Heda’s justice for her transgressions and-“

“Well Heda would sooner remove her own hand than punish _Wanheda_ ,” Lexa snaps, inflicting a childish amount of sarcasm into Clarke’s title. “No – I would rather remove _your_ hand. I would rather remove your hand than listen to another-“

“But Heda,” he appeals.

He cuts her off.

Just like that.

The room goes deathly silent. Lexa feels like she’s been slapped and the scout is looking between the two of them like maybe Heda had been backhanded into last harvest season rather than simply interrupted. The guard goes white and takes a shaky step back.

“H-heda,” he whispers, horrified. “Heda I’m sor-“

“Don’t,” Lexa whispers back.

The scout looks ready to bolt.

The guard’s spirit seems to have left his body, so Lexa reminds herself that Heda is above such debilitating anger. Or rather, she’s supposed to be. Through the haze of something that feels a lot like debilitating anger (but obviously cannot be), Lexa seems to recall Titus saying something of the sort. But then, he’s never not saying something.

She grasps her temples delicately between the tips of her thumb and forefinger, letting her eyes slip shut as she sighs heavily. “Go tell the guards at southern gate not to touch her or I will have their hands removed. I’ll be along shortly.”

The guard nods his head so eagerly Lexa fears it will fall off of his shoulders. He practically sprints out of the throne room and it does surprisingly little to quell the headache pounding through her skull and the anxiety tying her stomach in knots.

Lexa knows it is their jobs – no, their lives – to be invisible, but Lexa startles when she turns back to find the scout still appraising her from under her dark woolen cloak. She’s small – significantly less than a head shorter than her commander – but then, nearly all scouts are of her stature. Even without her Nightblood, Lexa was cursed never to be a scout. Too many long limbs. and unwilling to remove any of them.

For now.

“What’s your report, Scout?” Lexa asks wearily, walking away to find one of the trays of food the tower wards place strategically around her most frequented haunts throughout the day. Anything to try and sneak a meal down Heda’s throat.

She doesn’t hear her follow, but Lexa didn’t expect to hear it. It would be concerning if she had. “Heda, we’ve found the assassins.”

Lexa manages to find a tray of cold venison and grains abandoned on a council table and stuffs far too much into her mouth. It’s graceless and questionable, but the scouts don’t even technically exist so Lexa really doesn’t care if the cloaked woman trailing after her harbors the knowledge that Heda has horrible table manners.

“What assassins?” She manages around half a deer in her mouth. Lexa’s distantly aware that the question makes her sound ignorant and irresponsible, but if she’s being perfectly honest, there are always too many assassinations in any given season to keep track of all of them without specificity. People are always trying to kill political figures. Or their neighbors. Or just people who look at them sideways. She wishes the state of the coalition was one in which she didn’t have to ask ignorant questions like ‘what assassins?’ but, alas, those are not the times Lexa presides over.

The scout comes up at her elbow, placing her hands delicately on the table that Lexa’s gorging herself at. On the long list of talents scouts are known for, being gentle is not one of them. But the girl makes a noble effort.

“Heda, we’ve been…holding…the assassins from the festival,” she hedges.

Lexa just gives her a blank look, fork halfway back to her mouth.

“The ones responsible for the attack on Wanheda,” she clarifies softly. Lexa’s sure there’s nothing a scout doesn’t do softly, but it feels _almost_ gentle. But then, the scouts are renowned for knowing everything, so she imagines Heda’s affections are as common knowledge as the seasons. “The Skaikru assassins.”

Lexa slowly lowers her fork back to the plate and swallows her mouthful so it slinks painfully down her throat. “The – the what?”

“The Skaikru assassins,” she repeats. “We tracked the ones responsible for the attack on Wanheda.”

“Yes, I know the attack you’re referring to,” she says impatiently, “but do you mean to say that more Skaikru were attacked? Your report confuses me.”

The scout blinks at her for a moment before seeming to remember who she is speaking to and ducks her head respectfully. “No, Heda. I mean the assassins responsible for the attack on Wanheda _are_ of Skaikru.”

 

+++

 

_It has been two weeks and Clarke has not woken. Abby is still talking._

_“Then again, for all the research and clinical evaluation we’ve retained from before the bombs, we still know so little about head injuries and brain damage. It’s miraculous that for all the millions of dollars and centuries of brilliant minds and collective efficacy we still know next to nothing. Every case is unique and I can’t even begin to hypothesize what challenges Clarke will face when – well, if she wakes up, but I imagine the path of the bullet can effect anything from basic auditory comprehension, motor skills, language and verbal processes, and memory to more shocking things like temperament or even personality. But that all depends-“_

_And it goes on like that. Lexa understands maybe a quarter of the words out of her mouth on her best days. Way too frequently, Lexa will find herself glancing at Clarke wryly as though to commiserate with her about her mother. She forgets for a moment that Clarke is not present and she only disappoints herself._

 

+++

 

Lexa storms through the tower, crashing down stairs and lifts and past wards and apprentices who flatten themselves against the walls to avoid her wrath. She pushes past the guards at the front of the tower with the scout silent and close on her heels, kicking up dust as she stalks off toward the southern gate of the city.

Always Skaikru test her. They are a rabble of bickering, faithless and witless usurpers without regard for life, property, or authority. Their vows are empty, their friends are fickle, and their capacity for depravity and indifference is endless and vast. The peace between them has been a tireless, prickly thing, despite the three winters they’ve had to learn each other. Lexa tired long ago of dealings with _Skaikru_ , but they test her still.

But their faithlessness, their godlessness – it only makes them a scattered idea. There is no Skaikru because they do not care for each other like the other clans. It took her many seasons to understand, but saying that the Skaikru were one people was like saying that the worms and the boars and the blackbirds were one people. Clarke could no more lead them - no more speak for them in council – than a bird for an insect. They were a scattered, cruel people without consensus.

Skaikru would vex her for the rest of her life.

(Or the rest of _theirs_ if they fall any further in Heda’s graces.)

The thicker crowds in the southern market quickly part from Heda’s wrath, either bowing where they stood or scurrying away to feign interest in merchants’ wares or their own fingernails. Guards had fallen in behind her and, sensing their Heda’s mood, bodily forced the rest of the crowd to part when Lexa’s wrath wasn’t enough to tip them off.

She clears the throngs of squabbling barterers in record time, descending upon the guard tower with a snarl caught in the back of her throat. The scout’s murmured report, eerily detailed, echoes in incriminating phrases in the back of her head. She’s so frustrated – so enraged and hurt that she doesn’t even know whom she is angry at. She’s just angry.

Lexa’s sure the guards must have been expecting her, considering their prisoner, but they still scramble and bow and stutter reports that she largely ignores. Her eyes are honed into the girl in the back of the guard’s station. She can’t hear what Clarke is saying, but the girl is shaking her head adamantly and trying to pull her wrist free from the iron grip of one of the guards. Clarke tries to push against his chest for better leverage and he twists her arm up painfully.

“Unhand her,” Lexa snaps, shoving one of the babbling guards back into a rickety table. Clarke’s captor hears his Heda’s voice and drops Clarke’s wrist so fast it appears as though he had been burned by it. Clarke stumbles back into the corner, massaging the blood back into her hand and looking around wildly.

Lexa recognizes Clarke’s captor. He was a good friend of Gustus – a bedmate Lexa had always suspected – and a good man. Ricken is his name.

“Heda,” he says in his rough voice, pressing a fist over his heart and lowering his eyes. “Forgive me, but she’s being detained for theft in the markets. The merchant wishes to seek justice.”

“And I wish to not be summoned during important gatherings, but it seems none of us will be getting what we want today.”

Ricken bows lower. “Heda, you have my apologies, but this cannot be ignored.”

“I didn’t steal anything!” Lexa and Ricken turn to watch Clarke press herself into the corner, teeth bared and eyes narrowed. “I – I was just-“ She makes a frustrated noise and runs a hand through her hair. “I didn’t do it.”

Lexa raises an eyebrow at Ricken.

“Heda, I saw the whole thing,” he murmurs quietly.

Not quietly enough. “I – I paid for it, I swear,” Clarke insisted. “I think I just – it’s not like – I couldn’t…” she groans again, massaging her scalp anxiously. Her fingers dance nervously along her scar and Lexa follows it like she cannot bear to watch anything else.

Lexa tries to breathe out her anger in one long sigh, but it does nothing to quell the fire in her belly. “Ricken, Clarke – er, Wanheda did not intend to commit any crime.”

Ricken gives her an uneasy look, glancing between his Heda and the angry girl in the corner. “Heda?”

Lexa realizes with a start that she’s embarrassed. She does not know how to navigate the legend of Wanheda, her love for Clarke, and Clarke’s disabilities in front of anyone except for those who she has allowed around Clarke. She’s disgusted with herself for it, but gods she’s _embarrassed_.

“Wanheda is…ill,” she supplies lamely.

Clarke scoffs in the corner. “I’m _ill_?”

Lexa ignores her, unable to meet her eyes. “Her attack left her, um, damaged.”

“ _Damaged_?” Clarke seethes.

“Heda, I don’t understand.”

Lexa shoots a guilty look at Clarke before eyeing Ricken desperately, willing him to understand. “Clarke’s mind was injured in the attack,” she mumbles. “She does not remember things and she gets confused. Any harm done was unintended and without malice.”

Finally, understanding lights up Ricken’s eyes. It is uncommon for warriors to survive severe head injuries, but it has happened. There is little understanding of the way the mind works after such damage, but there is a culture of respect for those warriors who have retired under the care of wards for their disabilities.

“I understand, Heda.” He bows again. “I defer to your judgment as always.” Hesitantly, he turns to Clarke and offers her a similar dip. “My apologies, Wanheda.”

Clarke says nothing in return and Lexa cannot bring herself to meet her eyes or find out the expression she wears. “Ricken, may we have the room?”

The other guards practically sprint from the room, but Ricken takes the time to murmur his respects and bow his way out of the starkly lit station. Lexa places her hand on the thick oak table at her hip, tracing her fingertips lightly over the deep grooves and worn chips in the surface. She is stalling.

It’s about as bad as she thinks it’s going to be when she finally forces her eyes up to meet Clarke’s.

She’s hurt.

She’s hurt and confused and angry and everything Lexa knew her words would make the poor girl.

“Clarke-“

“I’m _damaged_?” Clarke fumes.

“Clarke, please, I-“

“No. No, you don’t get to-“ Clarke chokes and swallows down her emotions. “I’m fine!” She spits when Lexa raises a hand as if to come closer and comfort her. “I just forgot what I was doing, alright? It’s not a big deal.”

“Okay,” Lexa acquiesces quietly. “Okay, you forgot.”

Clarke exhales violently and shakes her head in anger. “No, you don’t believe me,” she accuses. “I’m not broken, Lexa. I can do things. I don’t have to be monitored every time I sneeze.”

Lexa nods. “Okay.”

“Stop _saying_ that!” Clarke rages, lurching forward to pound a fist against the flat plane of Lexa’s chest guard. “Stop treating me like a broken valuable. Stop treating me like I’d be priceless if only you could _fix me_.”

Lexa reels back a step, but it’s not from the blow to her chest. She feels like she’s been slapped and it must show because Clarke flinches back too. They regard each other from across the chasm they dug between them, breathing heavily and trying to remember how to build a bridge.

“I’m trying, Clarke,” Lexa finally whispers. “I’m trying so hard.”

Clarke shrugs helplessly. “Yeah, me too.”

“How do I fix this?” Lexa asks, reaching out to grasp Clarke’s fingers in a loose hold so she can break away if she wishes to.

Clarke doesn’t break away. “You don’t,” she inflicts upon Lexa as gently as she can. “This is not something that can be fixed and if it were, it would not be yours to fix,” she says. “I’m not the cross you are duty-bound to drag behind you for the rest of your life. I’m just trying to be Clarke in whatever limited way I can. You cannot drag me behind you, but if you wish to stand beside me still, I would match your pace.”

Lexa studies the lines of Clarke’s face, tracing over her tired eyes and pursed lips with a weary affection. Some people just weren’t born under moons of good fortune and not all lives were meant to be easy. “Would you let me be right for once?” She sighs with a rueful smile. “Would that be so difficult for you?”

Clarke matches her smile after a moment. “I think that’s my line.”

“No. For all my lives, for all of Heda’s generations of wisdom, we have not wit.” Lexa squeezes Clarke’s hand a little harder and sways into her warmth. “The ground is not conducive to gentle beings. We do not grow bleeding hearts and soft lovers down here.”

Clarke leans up, her free hand braced on Lexa’s shoulder, and presses her lips to Lexa’s cheek. It is everything Heda should fear. But if Heda had been allowed to be soft in the generations from the first Flame to this dimly lit guard station on a dull morning at the turn of the season, then perhaps they would not sentence their children to death or torture their enemies’ lovers or pillage their neighbors’ lands. Perhaps Clarke would not have shards of steel in her brain from a weapon made and wielded by her own people. Perhaps they would be a softer people.

Clarke lingers there and Lexa can pretend for a moment that they are whole and aligned and healthy for at least this moment. Clarke sighs, her breath tickling Lexa’s neck. “I think the ground did alright.”

 

+++

 

_Clarke wakes up for a brief moment some three weeks after the attack, confused and distressed. She doesn’t know where she is, she doesn’t know who Raven is, and her ribs are smothering her in pain while tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. Lexa rushes in behind Abby and hovers while her mother shines lights in Clarke’s eyes and fires nonstop questions at the unresponsive girl._

_“What’s – I can’t – Where is my dad?” She forces out amongst syllables that are almost words._

_Lexa inhales sharply at the exact time Abby does, but Abby regains her composure much faster. Shortly thereafter, they have to sedate her because she’s jerking her head around and panicking too badly not to hurt herself. Small flecks of blood are spread even against the thick warm sheets twisted around her as she dozes off uneasily._

_All Abby is able to learn is that Clarke is blind in her left eye and heartily confused. All Lexa learns is that there’s still somehow enough of her heart left to break. She suspects there always will be and Titus’s lessons make a little more sense._

 

+++

 

The assassins are men under a rebel banner, usurpers and cowards who had set out from Arkadia many moons past to establish their own government. When that had failed – when their bid for power ended in starvation and conflict with neighboring clans who did not recognize Skaikru without Wanheda’s protection – their minds turned dark with the violence and wicked intent that festers in men who cannot fill their guts or conquer their enemies. They turn to deceit and destruction.

Their leader is a man Lexa does not recognize by his sunken eyes, wild beard, and spitting accusations. His name, however, tugs at distant memories of unrest and political maneuvering. She is sure Clarke would remember him if she could remember anything except drawing maps.

“His name is Pike,” the Scout says in the same undertone all Scouts speak with. Scouts don’t have much recourse for speaking at all, so it is unsurprising that none of them are good at it. “He claims responsibility for the attack on Wanheda. He believes her dead.”

It is sorely tempting to spit his failure in his face before claiming justice in his blood, but Heda is expected of more than her revenge and broken heart. It would not be sound.

“What he thinks is of no concern.” Lexa watches him sleep, slumped over awkwardly against the back wall of his cell and snoring lightly through his dripping nose. “I want to paint Polis with his blood.”

The scout nods thoughtfully as though her Heda had just proposed they replace the rusted latches on the dungeon locks with new ones. “He had six conspirators. Only three lived to see these dungeons.”

“I want to paint Polis with _their_ blood as well,” Lexa grumbles.

“As Heda commands.”

Lexa relents, shaking her head and blowing out a sigh. Restraining herself from murder really takes it out of her sometimes. “No, not as Heda commands.” An image of a disapproving Clarke flashes in her mind’s eye and she barely suppresses an eyeroll. “Besides, Heda cannot paint,” Lexa adds under her breath.

The Scout is, as all scouts, unfamiliar with the concept of humor. Although, Lexa wonders not for the first time if it is not Trikru’s lack of appreciation for the concept of humor, but rather Heda’s own inability to be humorous. She could, of course, always order them to laugh.

“What would you have me do, Heda?”

Lexa weighs the request for only a moment. “Dispatch of the conspirators quietly. Pike will be executed publicly by Heda’s sword as a matter of Heda’s justice. It will be clean and quick for all that he deserves,” she says bitterly. “Polis must at least know Wanheda’s assassin faces justice.”

“Heda,” the scout murmurs, bowing slightly with a fist over her heart.

Lexa nods and glances back through the grate of his cell. “Pike will be executed as a Trikru traitor on a day when Skaikru are largely absent from trading in the city. His past allegiances to Skaikru will remain a secret matter of the state.”

“Heda?” The scout asks warily, curious about the deception.

“I will not publicly announce Skaikru’s involvement in an attack on Wanheda,” Lexa sighs. “Pike will die clanless, without banner, and without manifesto. This was not a political attack.” At the scout’s piercing stare, Lexa feels compelled to explain herself. “It is for the best.”

The scout, as always, offers another dip of her head before Lexa dismisses her. Lexa waits until she imagines the scout is out of earshot – she will never be sure though, as scouts glide so effortlessly over any terrain that they have no footfalls.

The cell door opens with a groaning sigh and a scuffle of grit and Lexa stands before the man within feeling calmer than she imagined she would. “This will be your last opportunity to speak on your behalf,” she informs him clinically. “Speak Pike, traitor to Skaikru.”

As Lexa predicted, Pike’s eyes open calmly, abandoning his charade of sleeping. “I have nothing to say,” he returned evenly.

“I do not suppose you would bow your head to a sovereign you do not recognize. Nor account for your actions.”

Pike offers a slight shrug and casts his glance to one of the walls of his cell. “Are you asking me why I killed Clarke?”

Lexa bristles and she’s not sure if it’s the insinuation that Clarke is dead or that the man uses her name so casually. It feels like disrespect from his mouth, though she knows Skaikru would not call her Wanheda.

“Was there a reason?”

Pike does her the courtesy of thinking about it. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?” He finally says.

Lexa narrows her eyes, bracing one hand on the hilt of her sword. “What do you mean?”

“On the ground,” Pike clarifies. “I spent so long despising grounders. You cut off a hand that steals, you starve a family that cannot provide, you behead a man that dares to think against his king, and you build gibbets for a clan’s pride for the crime of autonomy. And still, for all your _control_ – for all your _legacy_ \- these are not things that _you_ decide – _mighty Heda_ – it is about _power_. It’s about power and those too weak to take it,” he annunciates clearly, but in a deathly quiet, spitting rasp that sounds like a warrior’s final death rattle.

Lexa eyes him coolly. “And you are so different?”

Pike laughs at that, a scratching throaty sound that grates on Lexa’s ears. “Arkers were.” He blinks rapidly, lost in some vision that swims behind his sunken eyes. “Arkers were different.”

“And they are not now?”

“Heda,” Pike says like he’s scolding a child. “There are no Arkers. There is no ark. We’re all grounders now. What I’ve done to you – what I’ve done to survive – is under _your_ banner.” His eyes turn cold and alert and Pike looks more like a man than he has since Lexa first walked into his cell. “You may take my head off my shoulders tomorrow in front of your subjects, but the only wrong I will hold against you for it will be if you condemn me for living as you’ve taught me. Remove my head, _your worship_ , but do not pretend I’ve done any greater evil than you. You have more power, Heda. Not more righteousness.”

Lexa regards him quietly, fingers tracing the gilded grooves of the handle. “Why Clarke?”

“Because she had _power_.”

“And you wanted it?”

Pike laughed again. “I _feared_ it.”

Lexa realizes with a wary acceptance, that she has learned nothing she didn’t already know. Pike is a spineless, wicked man, but his diagnosis of the violence she’s seen and commanded by her hand is as grotesque as it is truthful. There is only power and fear. Nothing more.

(Clarke is more.)

“Did you know I used to teach a class called ‘Earth Skills’?” Pike muses aloud. Lexa gives him a slight shake of her head and he shrugs with something like good humor in his sunken eyes. “It’s just…funny.” He scratches at his beard thoughtfully. “None of my best students are still alive.” With that, he shuffles back against the wall to lie down in the dust, turning away in a clear dismissal. “Goodbye, Heda.”

Lexa does not speak another word to him until three moons hence when she removes his head while his dull, sunken eyes trace the wicked grooves of her sword, hungry and scared and full of so much nothing that Lexa fears it will swallow her when she opens him from ear to ear.

It does not.

+++

 

_Clarke does not remember her name. She does not understand the ring on her finger or the warlord at her bedside and explanations and reminders do not rectify that._

_It hurts._

_But, Clarke’s eyes are still blue, blue, blue. She tells Murphy to ‘go fuck himself’ a week after waking up and Lexa thinks it’s okay if she doesn’t remember._

_Maybe not_ okay.

_But if life is about more than just survival, and Clarke has somehow survived, then surely what awaits them is…_

_Well,_ more _._

+++

 

Lexa awakes at some point in the night to cool hands slipping around her waist, fingers dipping just beneath the hem of her shirt. Her bed had been a little overly warm that night and instead of wondering why there are hands under her shirt, she makes the unsound decision to embrace her cuddly assassin. Her sleep had been so atrocious that week that dying sounds more like a relief in the latest hours of another sleepless night than a cause for concern.

A face presses between her shoulder blades and a soft sigh rustles her shirt, fingers just managing to ticker her skin. As she clears the fog of almost-sleep from her mind, Lexa first wonders where the hell her guards are that somebody was able to just climb into her bed. Second, she wonders who the hell is in her bed. Third, she wonders just how romantically frustrated her guards perceive her that they allowed the first willing human into her bed. She was unsure whether to demote or promote them. She would err on the side of Heda’s generosity and demote them twice.

Though it had been a long while – too long, much much too long – Lexa begins to settle into the weight behind her and it becomes too familiar. A pressure settles warmly into her chest, but it grows at an alarming rate, rising up through her throat until it’s wrapped around her airway and she fears she’ll choke. It’s too much.

Clarke scoots even closer and sighs again. It’s so satisfied that Lexa forces the emotion from her throat. “Clarke?” She whispers.

“Commander,” Clarke slurs, halfway to sleep already.

The pressure shoots back up at twice speed and Lexa is worried that when she tries to speak no words will be able to force past the constriction. “You’re here,” she says stupidly. She is both disappointed and relieved that Clarke cannot see her face.

Clarke hums sleepily and presses her ear against Lexa’s back like she means to expose the gravity of this moment by the metric of Lexa’s heart. It is, of course, ludicrous because Clarke is delirious and mostly asleep and Lexa’s heart isn’t beating anyways.

“Yeah,” Clarke says simply. “Took me like three hours to find our bed,” she huffs. “Stop moving it.”

Yes, Clarke is delirious. But she is delirious and she _remembers_. Mostly delirious, though. “My apologies, Clarke,” she murmurs, a small smile twisting up the corner of her mouth. “You should make a map to find it.”

“Oh, hush.” The way Clarke squeezes her is sweet and familiar in a way that Lexa was sure they would never be again. Her toes trail down the backs of Lexa’s ankles absently while she shifts around, enjoying the cool side of Heda’s overly large and under-inhabited bed. “You smell nice.”

“Thank you. You smell like maps.”

“What did I just say?”

Heda allows herself to be hushed – a rare thing indeed – and sleeps for eleven hours, which is likely the single longest increment of sleep any Commander has ever indulged in not counting death or dying.

Clarke gets lost nearly every night thereafter, but usually finds her way back to their room before the sun rises, triumphant and warm and soft and a little annoyed by how long it took her to find the bedroom she continually accuses Lexa of moving. Lexa sleeps better. Clarke gets charcoal all over her pillows and remembers Lexa’s name half as often as she should. Which is, technically, twice as much as Lexa could have hoped. Polis tower is haunted less by a ghost and more by an irritable cartographer. The only thing ghastly about her is those damned spectacles.

 

 

 

It feels like more.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end scene. they were fine and happy forever, trust me.
> 
> i do hope you enjoyed it, i seem to recall enjoying writing it. not sure what's up next for me, probably kick my ass in gear with this original bullshit im writing, so pray to god i finish that before the end of time. who fuckin knows. anyways, cheers and stay classy (although ive seen some of the tags on this godforsaken website, so im not exactly holding my breath, but a girl can dream.)
> 
> [this is the good shit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKN0Gfgbels). top shelf. just for u.
> 
> may all of your worst classes by cancelled and all of your bosses fear you.


End file.
